Television was once her only window on the world. Now Natascha Kampusch — still adjusting to life after spending eight and a half years in an underground cell — is starting an improbable new career as a TV talk show host.
Less than two years after staging a dramatic escape while her captor was distracted with a phone call, the young Austrian whose ordeal stunned people worldwide is going prime time.
Natascha Kampusch Meets ..., a chat show featuring local celebrities, debuts tomorrow evening on Puls4, a new private cable channel.
A Puls4 trailer shows Kampusch typing on a laptop computer, pouring herself a glass of mineral water and grinning as makeup artists give her a final touchup on the set. She wears her long blond hair down and sports a sweater and a floral-patterned skirt — both in purple, her favorite color.
But Kampusch, 20, is the first to acknowledge she’s an unlikely talk show host.
“So much has been written about me, and so many people want to know what it’s like to be on the other side” of the interviewer’s table, she told Austrian media this week.
Kampusch was a freckle-faced 10-year-old when she vanished while walking to school in Vienna in March 1998. Her abduction was Austria’s greatest unsolved criminal mystery until Aug. 23, 2006, when — pale, feeble and nearly blinded — she stumbled to freedom.
Within hours of her escape, kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil — who had confined her to a cramped, dingy, windowless cell beneath his suburban home — committed suicide.
Kampusch, who was 18 when she escaped, drew fresh attention last month after a similar but even more horrific case surfaced in Austria.
Police allege that Josef Fritzl, 73, confessed to holding his daughter captive for 24 years in a windowless prison beneath his home and fathering seven children with her.
Kampusch has offered financial assistance to Fritzl’s alleged victims and said she wants to meet with his 42-year-old daughter, who was 18 when she was confined to the cellar.
Those who have closely followed Kampusch’s metamorphosis won’t be surprised at her new career: Since she resurfaced, she repeatedly said she was considering a job in journalism, even though she has no formal training and is still completing her high school education.
Kampusch was remarkably poised and articulate when — just two weeks after escaping — she gave her first nationally broadcast interview.
During her captivity, Kampusch was allowed to watch TV and videos, listen to the radio and read books in her cell.
Executives at Puls4 said they plan to air her talk show once a month. The show will be prerecorded rather than broadcast live.
As a host, she said she intends to engage her guests “very openly in front of the camera — and also reveal quite a lot about myself.”
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