Everyone remembers that magical scene where he, waving from his car in a flash of camera lights, drives off saying: “Mark my words, I will become Prime Minister.”

When Pim Fortuyn is ushered out of a late-night Hilversum studio after a storm of emotion, he calls me.

“I’ll only come to you. But then you’ll have to sleep with me,” he says, bursting into laughter.
I reply, as wittily as I can, that we’ll decide that after the interview.

I have no idea why he wants to sit down with us, now that the entire country is clamoring for his story. Maybe he thinks: That De Poel guy—I can handle him (misjudgment). Or: The tougher the interviewer, the better it makes me look (could be). Or: Maximum ratings (very possible). Or perhaps: erotic motives? (who knows).

Whatever the reason, the interview is a tough one. I suggest to him that his political future is likely over. First he calls for a constitutional amendment to curb immigration in De Volkskrant, then every party leader brands him a far-right extremist, and finally, even his own apostles in Leefbaar Nederland abandon him. It’s over. It’s done.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. And neither could the rest of the country.
The hastily assembled Pim Fortuyn List would go on to win a substantial part of the electorate. Not because of the party, of course. But because of him. Pim. A dandy of the common people. An eccentric homosexual, even adored by football hooligans. A politician in the making, once rejected by every political party.

When he is assassinated on May 6, 2002—just nine days before the general election—everything suddenly comes to a standstill. And something tells me: this is more than a murder, even more than a political assassination. It feels almost like the destiny of “the divine bald one,” as the later-murdered Theo van Gogh once called him.

I recall a scene from his campaign trail.
A woman in a disadvantaged neighborhood asks Fortuyn what he plans to do with the housing benefit—her housing benefit.
“We’re going to abolish it, ma’am,” he says without hesitation.
It’s the look on her face that reveals the essence of his rising popularity. You can see her thinking: If he says so, then it must be for the best. We all have to make sacrifices.

A year after his death, I make the documentary “Pim Fortuyn: The Messiah.” I gain access to some of his closest friends.
One of them is Jan ’t Hooft, a dentist from Groningen, who corresponded with Fortuyn for years about his deepest soul-searchings and stood close by him in the increasingly anxious final days of the campaign.
And there’s Mieke Bello: Fortuyn’s soul friend, a consultant and coach to executives in government and business on matters of authenticity and inspiration.

At times, it's staggering.
Long before his political rise, Fortuyn wrote to Jan ’t Hooft about identifying with the rejected Christ, his inner calling, the long patience of preaching to the nation, and his growing fear that fate would eventually strike.
It wasn’t delusion—it was deep conviction, his friend knew.

Mieke Bello speaks of Fortuyn’s often impossible character, his shamelessness. But also of how afraid she was that his God-given mission would fail—a humiliation he would not be able to bear. And why, despite all his eccentricity, Fortuyn resonated so deeply with “ordinary people.”
“He came from an overwhelmingly ordinary family. He wanted to be the man with a butler, but he was also the guy who loved fries with mayonnaise. People felt: we matter again.”

The mission.
The waiting.
The rejection.
The surrender.
The image.
The sacrifice.

It was compelling to explore Pim Fortuyn in this way through a documentary—the near-religious undertone of his character, the popular affection, and his fate.
Or, as theologian Koen Wessel once summarized:
“Without that messianism, he would never have stirred so much. He also would not have been murdered.”