TV Chef Hugo Kennis Can't Stop Crying In Travel Show RTL 4: 'I Need Help'

With videoTV chef Hugo Kennis (37) is during the recording of the RTL program Race across the world overwhelmed by his emotions in a way he had never experienced before. In conversation with his travel buddy Eva Cleven (36), he couldn’t stop crying and came to an important realization.

For the Martijn Krabbé show, five duos of celebrities and supporters travel from Mexico City to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. That takes twenty hours by plane, but they are not allowed by air. For two months they cover the 14,000 kilometers by land, without debit cards and telephones and with the same budget as the price of two plane tickets.

Hugo Kennis participated in the hope of reinventing himself after the breakdown of his relationship with Sander Bos. The two were together for six and a half years and engaged when they split in 2021. Hugo fled from his work for a long time, but during the tough journey in the RTL show he was confronted with himself. After four weeks of dormancy, the emotions came out in one go on Wednesday evening, saw 679,000 viewers.

‘Could only scream’

,,I want to be happy with myself”, Kennis said to his girlfriend Eva Cleven, known as a DJ and presenter. She sees that Hugo strives for perfection and fears that this will lead to an endless search for something unattainable. “Maybe I’m perfect when I’m happy with myself,” he reasoned. “That is also a form of perfection. To be your best self… (…) is that I’m going to love myself.”

At these words he fell sobbing into Eva’s arms. ,,I was very shocked by my own emotions”, he said afterwards. “I found that very intense. I’ve never experienced that before, that such a clot came out that I couldn’t stop crying and actually could only scream.”

Never before has Hugo Kennis been so overwhelmed by his emotions as in Race across the world. © RTL

It was tough, but necessary. “I found out that I can’t avoid processing shit. My greatest goal has been achieved, that I have come to myself. That I finally dare to admit: I need help for this.”

Back in the Netherlands, he wants to take on that process ‘quietly and under good supervision’. Hugo, who briefly walked away from the camera during his crying fit, felt especially relieved afterwards. “This had to come out. I hated this for the first few weeks. That came out after a month. I’m glad it’s coming out now and I didn’t have this shitty feeling for two months.”

Hugo and Eva were very frugal during the trip, but lost precious dollars when they got ripped off when changing money: