Many of the stars from our brightest years are bidding us farewell in this fateful month of March. Following the deaths of Bruno Salomone and Isabelle Mergault, both succumbing to cancer, the indomitable Chuck Norris, and Nicholas Brendon, one of the stars of Buffy, we learn on Wednesday, March 25 from Paris Match about the passing of Loana. The contestant, who had won Loft Story, the very first French reality TV show, was found lifeless at her home. She was 48 years old.
Since then, tributes have been pouring in. Benjamin Castaldi, who hosted the show, did not hide his sorrow: “There are faces we never forget. And hers, Loana’s, is part of our collective history. Loana was not a character. She was a woman. A real one. With her scars, her tenderness, her vulnerability laid bare. And that’s precisely why we loved her,” he wrote on Instagram.
Mort de Loana: elle nous avait révélé si elle était toujours en contact avec sa fille Mindy
On the occasion of the release of the series Culte on Prime Video, Loana granted us an interview. “To see someone who resembles you, with your life… I won’t say I’m a fan. I cried the first time I saw that. I can see myself, I have the images in my head of what I experienced. I said to myself: ‘It’s okay’. But when I saw the trailer for the first time, I didn’t think it would affect me like that,” she explained at the time. The series also delved into a hidden part of her life: at the time of her participation, she was already a mother to a daughter named Mindy, born in 1998, and whose custody was taken away from her.
Mort de Loana: qui est Steve, le père de sa fille Mindy à qui elle avait caché la naissance de leur bébé?
At the age of 19, Loana became pregnant with her daughter Mindy. This pregnancy was particularly complicated because the father was not her then-boyfriend Gwenaël, but one of her best friends named Steve. For years, Loana hid the truth from Steve, leading him to believe that the baby had died of sudden infant death syndrome. It was much later that he learned that his daughter was alive.
Once informed, Steve gained custody of Mindy. Although Loana had visitation rights, she never showed up. She later explained that she felt restricted by the idea that she did not have the right to do so. “I was completely fixated on the fact that I did not have the right. Maybe at that time, I should have done it and initiated something. Afterwards, the years went by… I knew he had met a woman, that she was a good stepmother. They had a real family around her. I thought, maybe out of lack of courage, I won’t knock on the door,” she explained to journalist Paul Sanfourche, author of the book Sexisme Story, Loana Petrucciani. A distance that she sadly paid for throughout her life.
