Sophia Pavlidou gave a very interesting interview to "OK!" where she talked about the sexual harassment she received at the beginning of her career, about the incident with Manos Papagiannis and about her divorce with Christos Ferentinos.
About the sexual harassment she received
"I was a little girl who came from Thessaloniki, smiling, social and with a certain appearance. So for some people this girl was the "easy one". The one who wanted to sleep with everyone. I won't mention names because it doesn't matter, but I will tell you that I was sexually harassed by many colleagues at the beginning of my career.
If you like, it was also a need for me to have a family and to have a man by my side. Obviously I wanted it, there was love and I was very lucky, but I also felt the need because I was getting a lot of abuse. I remember doing a screen test and the camera taking my legs instead of my talking face.
Another time on a prime time sitcom I went to the studio to do a rehearsal scene and the whole crew was missing. There was the co-worker in boxers and he asked me to strip. For a scene that was prime time at 9:00 at night. Why would I take my clothes off? Of course I got up and walked off that set. I then felt the need to call the star of the show and tell him what happened to me. He replied "that's how it happens, Sophia."
Unfortunately, little girls come in who want to be on TV, you tell them 'pull down your pants' and they strip. So they find and do it." I was a girl who had finished her studies and had her dreams. I won't say the name of the colleague, but lucky for me I never met him in front of me in the course of my career. Not even at a premiere or a social event."
About the incident with Manos Papagiannis
"At that time society was not at all ready to accept such a thing. This is something that I noticed from the way the media handled the whole case. I did not need to resolve my differences on television, which is why I appealed to the judiciary, nor did I need a colleague to come out to support me, nor did I need to start a movement. I took an action and had a reaction. It didn't occur to me not to denounce it.
When all this happened with the media mishandling, I filed the lawsuit to keep quiet and not to be exposed. To keep my boys out of trouble too. Because this man kept going on the news channels talking and my kids would come home from school and ask me, "Mom, why does he keep doing this? Why is he talking?". This man came out publicly and admitted to some extent to his actions. He admitted on a TV show that he kicked in the dressing room door. But at the time no one realized what he was saying. The journalists heard it and kept on giving this man a platform to speak.
Today who dares to do that? No one. So you can see from that how unprepared society was to accept it. All I wanted was for it to pass, to go away, to be forgotten. Besides, I will find my justice in the courts." But even the response on social media back then was different. There were comments under my posts "and you got a smack, so what?". That's how far behind we were. Unbelievable! No one has the right to raise a hand on you and that's what I want to pass on to the young kids. You have to react to it.
At the time I didn't understand it but the violence you get, both psychological and physical, leaves you scarred. The bruise may go away, but there comes a time when you say: "Did he dare put his hands on me?" "How could he?" We're not children. I am a mother with two children and he is a father with two children.
There, of course, you have to transform the trauma in order to move on with your life. You have to forgive this man because he must have seen it somewhere too. We don't know how he has grown up and what he has been through. We have to take these things into account because that is the only way you can forgive the other person. And you don't forgive him because you justify his action but for your own mental health and to move forward."
On the divorce from Christos Ferentinos
"It is a difficult situation. Even if you're 45 years old, if your parents tell you they're getting divorced, you're going to be upset. Our sons were teenagers. But it didn't scare me because our separation was a conscious decision and not a whim of the moment. We had given it a lot of thought, both me and their dad. So I knew that this is something that kids understand. After all, it's true what they say "happy parents, happy children."
At first, of course, it came to them somehow, but then it wasn't an issue because they saw how much Chris and I loved each other. We had our disagreements and anger too. No divorce is easy. But we tried. Christos and I have a deep love, which is why we had two children and were together for almost twenty years. We very quickly put our personal egos and our anger aside and said that we would just keep the love and all the good things that happen to us. We communicated that to our children as well.
So even though we broke up, we went on family vacations together and of course we got together for dinner parties or celebrations. I want to tell you that for all of this obviously we had consulted a child psychologist. I've heard my kids tell the specialist: "It didn't bother us that our parents got divorced because we have other friends of ours whose parents are in court. Our parents are dear to us."
Source: protothema.gr
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