Photo: Independent Photo Agency / IMAGO
"I am not who you think": Charlotte Casiraghi on Italian TV
On Italian TV, Charlotte Casiraghi said she has long felt reduced to a glossy image. She talked about her new book, the father she lost at the age of four and her work with young people with eating disorders.
Charlotte Casiraghi was a guest on Sunday on the popular Italian talk show "Che tempo che fa", hosted by Fabio Fazio. She said she has long felt reduced to a glossy image of a dream life of privilege. "Many times I have wanted to shout: I am not who you think I am," she said.
The daughter of Princess Caroline of Monaco was in Milan to launch the Italian edition of her book, "La crepa". It was published in French in January as "La Fêlure", and reaches Italian bookshops on 27 October.
"Italian is my dad's language"
She answered partly in Italian and partly in French. "Italian is my dad's language, my family's language," she said. Her father, Stefano Casiraghi, was Italian. He died in a powerboat racing accident in 1990, when Charlotte was four.
She said she has spent a great deal of time studying, reading and writing, but that this was not what people were interested in, because it did not fit the image they had of her. Charlotte Casiraghi studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. Asked who she really is, she replied: "I don't know who I am. Identity is something very complex." She added that what we see on Instagram is not real life.
A crack, not a break
The book's title means the crack. "A crack is not a full break, it is a slight break," she explained. It can be invisible, and you can live with it for a long time, but if you are not careful it can lead to everything collapsing. She drew inspiration from the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote about his own breakdown.
Fazio asked about her father's death. She said that losing a parent early makes you ask questions no one can fully answer, and that this was part of why she turned to philosophy. But she would not say that her own crack is only about that, because everyone reacts to grief differently.
She also said that the designer Karl Lagerfeld was an important friend. According to her, he was the only one who was not interested in using her for photo shoots when she was young. Instead he opened his vast library to her, encouraged her to study philosophy and sent her books every month.
Helping young people with eating disorders
For the past four years, Charlotte Casiraghi has led a discussion group at a child and adolescent psychiatric unit. There she uses books and philosophy to help young girls with eating disorders build a new relationship with their bodies. She mentioned writers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Maya Angelou. Literature does not take the pain away, she said, but it gives it a shape.
Asked about her grandmother, the film star Princess Grace, she said she has seen all her films but cannot talk about her because she never met her. She also said she does not think about being part of a princely family every day. "I think I grew up in a completely normal family," she said, but added that she is proud of the history she is part of.
Finally, she had a message for viewers: "Dare to live. Precisely because we are fragile, we can create something meaningful."