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HONEST girl talk – that is what British television host Amanda de Cadenet is offering in her new TV interview series.

In her show, The Conversation With Amanda de Cadenet, the former actress-model-photographer will have frank tete-a-tetes with guests including Jane Fonda, Gwyneth Paltrow and Lady Gaga. Issues they talk about range from body image to career disappointments to post-partum depression.

Girl talk is sorely lacking in mainstream television, says the 41-year-old host.

"Everywhere I looked, I found stories that were not true. They were fabricated, they were embellished, they were not authentic and it worries me because if you have women who are comparing themselves to people's lives that they think are a certain way ... no wonder we're all feeling bad about themselves," she says in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where she is based.

The mother of three, who is married to American rocker Nick Valensi of The Strokes, adds: "You're just bombarded with all kinds of information and media imagery, stories that tell you that to be a woman, you have to behave a certain way. I disagree with a lot of the messaging."

Her show, she says, is a platform for "women to speak up and speak out on things that they care about and that give some alternative options", through telling their stories that "were truthful".

Her chat show started broadcasting in the United States last year and has been so successful that it was launched in Britain recently.

It premiered on regional pay-TV recently on the Lifetime channel.

She describes her celebrity guests, among them actresses Fonda, Paltrow and Zoe Saldana, and pop star Lady Gaga, as women who are "very outspoken and not apologetic for being who they are".

The TV host herself was a wild child of the 1990s and used to be known for partying hard and dating a string of A-list boyfriends from actor Keanu Reeves to English model Nick Kamen to rock band Duran Duran's bassist John Taylor. She was married to Taylor from 1991 to 1997 and has a daughter Atlanta, now 20, with him.

She wed Valensi, 32, in 2006 and they have six-year-old fraternal twins.

She says she has no qualms about being candid about her own life when chatting with her female guests.

"I don't have any sort of shame about any of the things that I've lived through, and I've lived through some very difficult things in my life. And the good and the positive in that is that I get to talk to other women about those experiences," she says.

"If you're a woman or a girl and you are dealing with infidelity or body image issues, or finance and security, or career disappointment or post-partum depression or addiction, whatever your thing is ... If you're dealing with that, don't feel ashamed about it because there are hundreds of thousands of other women who are also dealing with it. So let's just help one another and talk about it."

Asked if she has always been a girl's girl, she says: "I was a boy's girl for a long time and I guess somewhere in my mid-20s, I realised boys come and go, but your girlfriends stay the same.

"I value women's friendships. They have been the most valuable part of my life, other than my children." – The Straits Times, Singapore/Asia News Network

*The Conversation With Amanda de Cadenet airs every Monday at 8pm on Lifetime (Astro Ch 709).

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Isnin, 21 Oktober 2013