Belen Rodriguez has decided to speak. Not as a showgirl, not as a television character, but as a woman.
Guest of the first episode of the new season of Beastshosted by Francesca Fagnani on Rai 2, the most famous Argentinian in Italy stripped herself of all defenses, facing her most fragile part live: depression, addiction and detoxification.
“One panic attack after another. I didn’t open the windows for two months. I didn’t get out of bed. I ended up in the clinic”, she says, with the voice of someone who has truly known the darkness.
Behind the limelight, the millions of followers and the cover loves, there was a woman who could no longer breathe.
And this time, Belen doesn’t hide:
“They prescribed benzodiazepines to calm me down, but I became addicted to them. Detox is devastating, it’s like coming off heroin.”
“I’m destroyed, but I’m still here”
It is not the first time that Belen talks about her dark period, but it is the first time that she does so with this sincerity.
After the separation from Stefano De Martino, the showgirl lost her balance. The impeccable public image began to crumble under the weight of reality: crises, panic attacks, emptiness.
“I felt finished, useless. I looked out the window and didn’t want to open it. I was afraid of the world.”
A story that removes all filters, all glamour. Belen’s life, the real one, was for months a bed, pills and silence.
Then, the decision: get help. “I entered the clinic. It was hell, but also my salvation.”
Drugs, love and professional disappointments
To the classic question “Have you ever tried substances?”, Belen responds without hesitation
“Yes, I tried drugs. But I never overdid it.”
A sentence that in a normal talk show would be a bomb, but a Beasts it becomes an extra piece of truth.
Because Fagnani doesn’t judge, and Belen doesn’t justify herself.
And when it comes to romantic relationships, Rodriguez brings out her usual cutting irony:
“I’m abusive, aggressive. I’ve beaten all my boyfriends. Once I even threw a cactus.”
He laughs, but not too much. It’s a way to lighten a heavy story, to remember that anger often arises from pain.
On the professional front, the disappointment is evident.
“I would have deserved more. Television is apprenticeship, no one teaches you. And when you finally learn, they don’t give you the space to speak. Once the beauty is over, the work ends. But I’m not just beautiful: I’m good. And this thing pains me.”
A bitter confession. In the world of entertainment, where the value of a woman seems linked to her age and her body, Belen sends a very clear message: beauty passes, the head remains.
A woman who breaks a taboo
It took courage, a lot of courage, to say in prime time:
“I was addicted to benzodiazepines. I hadn’t opened the windows for two months.”
A type of sincerity that is surprising, especially in a country where mental health is still seen as a weakness to be hidden.
Belen, on the other hand, chooses to show her face.
Not to create an audience, but to make people understand that even behind perfection there can be desperation.
That depression spares no one, not even those who live in the spotlight.
“My fight can help others,” he says. And in that sentence there is the whole turning point: pain transformed into testimony.
In a world where everyone only shows the best side, the perfect photo, the glossy life, Belen did the opposite: she showed the crack. And that crack, paradoxically, is the truest and most human thing I’ve ever done on television. In fact, pain has no social class: it can affect you even if you are rich, famous and apparently happy. Addictions are not a question of weakness, but often the consequence of those who must appear strong at all costs. Healing, then, is not a spectacle: it is slow, tiring, full of failures. But it’s the only way.
True strength lies not in denying suffering, but in admitting it. There is no shame in saying “I feel bad”, on the contrary, it is the first step towards truly feeling better. In a television system that asks you to smile even when you are collapsing, Belen had the courage to appear destroyed. And for once, it wasn’t a slip of style: it was an act of truth.
Belen Rodriguez, with her confession, shattered the image of the perfect woman and replaced it with something much more powerful: fragility. Because today true strength is not pretending to be invincible, but having the courage to show ourselves as human. Better a woman who admits that she has collapsed than a thousand masks who pretend to be fine. And if it takes a star saying it in prime time to remind everyone, then so be it.
