Ulla Essendrop: I almost did not exist before I came to Denmark

Publication date: 4 April 2021

Ulla Essendrop, who has put "Aftenshowet" on pause and has hosted DR Nyhederne, was born in Calcutta and came to Denmark as an adopted child when she was almost three years old. Only after she herself has become a mother does the past she does not know begin to call.

Ulla Essendrop has one image.

That's all she has from her first three years of life, or exactly: From her first two years and ten months, which is the part of her life she spent in an orphanage in Calcutta until she was adopted by a pair of musicians from Aalborg district Skalborg and came to grow up in Denmark.

A picture showing herself as a little girl in a black and white picture.

With thin legs. A small, dear face that looks seriously into the camera. And wearing a short, nice dress with braces.

The now 44-year-old Ulla Essendrop knows virtually nothing about her past in India. In addition to this one image.

- Most people know what they looked like when they were very young. Most people have someone to help them create the story of themselves.

- They have someone who can tell them stories about what they were like back then. I have no knowledge of myself as a baby. Nothing. I almost did not exist until I came to Denmark two years and ten months old.

Carefree

Yet her story is not really about missing anything.

The TV host, who we know from "Aftenshowet", but who has just switched to DR Nyhederne, where she continues as a morning host on TV-Avisen, tells a story about getting something.

Few parents. Get opportunities. Get skills. And be allowed.

When Ulla's Danish parents, who are both professional classical musicians, but are now retired, picked her up at Kastrup Airport in 1979, she got a carefree into her life and was allowed to unfold and find her own way, she says.

- I was carefree. High up in high school, I was simply so happily liberated from thoughts of what others thought of one. It did not strike me at all that it was something to worry about.

And she never felt different.

- I never thought about it. There was no one, neither in my childhood nor youth, who pointed me out as different. I did not feel it. Really not.

Professional dancer

Her childhood and youth were marked by dance and music.

- I have heard my parents play my whole upbringing. I have been with my mother countless times when she played in Dronninglund Church, where she was organist, and I have sat in the back row of the concert hall countless times when my father played in the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra. I even sang in church choirs and played the piano for 10 years.

And then she danced. And gradually she danced more and more.

- I started going to dance with a friend when we were about six years old. The dance hit me right in the heart ball right away.

While in high school and later in college, she danced alongside her studies and made music videos, performances, performances.

She studied humanities informatics, which became a bachelor's degree in communication at Aalborg University.

Then she took a sabbatical year, where she made a living by dancing as a professional dancer, after which she continued at Aarhus University in media studies.

At a crossroads

If she has to point to a crossroads in her life, it's there: In the choice between the dance world and the media industry.

At the time she was standing at that crossroads, she lived in London, where she worked for Viasat Broadcasting.

- I knew it was with the TV industry, as it is with the dance: You can not do any of those parts half. When you go in there, you have to do it 100 percent, fully and completely. And then it was TV I chose.

- In a way, I had also danced what I was supposed to. But at the same time, I also know that if I had not ended up in the media industry, I would have had a dance school today. I'm sure of that.