“We were on top of each other”

Sonia Rolland has a heavy past. Miss France 2000 had to leave her native land, Rwanda, in 1989, at the age of 7, to settle in Burundi with her family, then fled Africa in 1994 and settled in France, in order to escape to the genocide of the Tutsis. The young girl therefore had to start from scratch with her family. And the change was not easy…

Sonia Rolland: her youth was “incredibly violent”

Arriving in France, Sonia Rolland and her family settled in Cluny, in Saône-et-Loire. But this new life in Burgundy was not rosy for the young girl who experienced a real social downgrade while the family had a relatively good situation in Burundi. “We ended up in a public housing project, where we were on top of each other. It was incredibly violent“, she recalled to Madame Figaro. “A printer for twenty years and an avant-garde feminist, my father found himself working in a factory. My mother became a department manager in a supermarket despite her qualifications. She was part of the 1% of Tutsis who had access to studies“, she explained.

Sonia Rolland: why her father pushed her to participate in Miss France

The one who later became a beauty queen and then an actress was strongly confronted with racism during her adolescence. “We were the only African family in a town of 5000 inhabitants and I was constantly exposed to racism“, she regretted. The young woman was called “Banania” Or “Snow White” by some residents.

To escape this daily life, Sonia Rolland’s parents each imagined a future for her. Her mother saw her embarking on a career in basketball. But it was above all her father who pushed her to try her luck in the Miss France adventure, which allowed her to acquire the notoriety that we know today: “My father was looking for a break and he jumped at the chance when an organizer asked me to participate in the Miss Burgundy competition.

Sonia Rolland confides: the legacy of her daughters

The former beauty queen, now 43, has always sought to be independent. It was his family who passed on these values ​​to him. “My father always told me: ‘If you want to be happy, you have to emancipate yourself.’ And my mother comes from a dynasty of Tutsi women who encourage women to be free“, she detailed.

Today, it is these values ​​that she wishes to transmit to her daughters, Tess, 17 years old, born from her former love with Christophe Rocancourt, and Kahina, 13 years old, fruit of her former romance with Jalil Lespert. If the first is more “contemplative” And “modest” and the second with a “fiery character“, both seem to have inherited their mother’s free spirit.”These two teenagers also teach me a multitude of things“, she added. Like mother, like daughters!