One more time. But for real.

Can you be yourself on command? In front of the camera, I discover again and again how hard that is. ‘One more time, Maris. Exactly the same. But as if you are saying it for the first time.’

There I stood. Same spot, same words, same movement. Only now it had to feel real again.

Last summer I had five filming days for Design Secrets. Beforehand I had made myself one promise: I am going to enjoy this. And I did.

At times it felt like a school trip. Early starts, into the make-up chair, new places, new people. From the dunes and a building site in Domburg to art, materials, my own home and eventually even South Africa. A crew that surprisingly quickly felt like a team, a lot of laughter between takes, and waiting together for the light to be right.

I had not felt that kind of lightness in my work for a long time.

A whole world opened up in terms of content, too. I met makers and specialists I might otherwise never have spoken to at such length. People with a deep knowledge of light, floors, sanitary ware and art, each with their own craftsmanship and their own way of looking.

But the most unexpected lesson came during the takes.

Sometimes, in the middle of a sentence, I suddenly saw myself from above. A kind of helicopter view, as if I were standing next to the cameraman. And I would think: this doesn’t sound real. I was saying the right words, neatly even, but I wasn’t feeling them. And apparently you can’t hide that.

My respect for actors and presenters has grown considerably. Staying sincere while everything around you is directed turns out to be a craft. Showing yourself while a lens is pointed at you and someone calls out ‘one more time’ for the fourth time.

What strikes me is that I know that same tension from my own work. A space can be technically flawless and still do nothing to you. The colours are right, the materials beautiful, the light works.

And yet there is nobody home.

Words, it seems, work the same way.

Only when I stopped trying to get it right, and went back to what I actually wanted to say, did something change in my voice, my face, my energy. It became lighter, and more real.

I hadn’t expected a film set to teach me once again what I have been trying to capture in my designs for so long: what we truly feel lands more deeply, in the end, than what we try to make perfect.

That is why this experience leaves me wanting more. Not because I now talk to a camera completely at ease (absolutely not), but because each time I dared to let go a little more.

From Sunday 11 October you can watch what came out of those filming days, every week at 4 pm on SBS6. And I already know what I will be watching for: not the moments when I deliver my lines perfectly, but the moments when I forgot there was a camera.

It is precisely in those moments that you truly see someone.

When do you forget that someone is watching?

Mariska Jagt — interior designer and founder of The Home of Soul