“I Never Gave a Single Statement”: Otasevic on Divorce

Momcilo Otasevic has broken years of silence about his divorce from Jelena Percin. In an interview with Blic, published on September 9 and 10, the actor explained publicly for the first time why he never commented on the split, and says he has been credited with words he never actually said.

The Montenegrin actor has lived in Zagreb for years. He and Jelena Percin have two children, daughter Masa and son Jaksa, and he names them as the main reason Zagreb became home for him.

“I have two children now, and whether I like it or not, I have to live where my children are,” Otasevic says, adding that the arrangement actually suits him, since the breaks between filming shows in Croatia give him time to also work on a film or a stage play.

Asked directly about the divorce and the years of media coverage that followed it, the actor did not mince words.

As for that private story of mine and the divorce, I never gave a single statement. But everyone else was smarter and knew everything better than me, so I just let them be the smart ones.

He sums up in one line why he chose to stay quiet.

“Because the smarter one backs down,” Otasevic says.

His silence on the divorce overlapped with months in which Otasevic was also the center of public attention over allegations that he had secretly filmed his ex-wife, as well as a social worker. Sources differ on the details. Mondo reports that police found 10,000 recordings and that an indictment against the actor was confirmed, while tportal writes that the circumstances of the case are still being established. Otasevic did not address the case itself in his interview with Blic, but he made clear he does not believe the public is entitled to every detail of his private life.

“Not everyone always has to know where I am, what I’m doing, what I’m wearing, what I’m eating or where I go swimming,” the actor says, adding that he sees his work as a form of love rather than an obligation, and that he gives his share to the audience when he is on stage or in front of the camera.

Otasevic did not comment in this interview on the case over the secret filming allegations, nor on the differences between how Serbian and Croatian media have covered him. The months in which he was the lead story in the celebrity and crime pages, he says, did not change how much he loves his job, nor how much he values spending time with his children over answering every question about his private life.

While Otasevic chose silence, Jelena Percin has since spoken more openly about that period, including her new relationship with musician Ante Gele. The two married this summer, at a ceremony in Italy.

Otasevic, for his part, singles out one moment from the past few months as especially meaningful, and it has nothing to do with the divorce, but with his daughter. After the premiere of the play “Michelangelo Buonarroti” in Tivat, as he was leaving the stage and giving statements to press, Masa was waiting for him. When they embraced, she said something he did not expect.

“Dad, tonight is the first time in my life I cried from happiness,” his daughter told him, adding that she herself could not explain why the emotion overwhelmed her that night.

Otasevic remembers that moment as one of the most beautiful of his career, more meaningful to him than any award. It was unusual, he says, and emotional, and beautiful, and for him one of the personal high points of the past few years, a period in which he was under constant public scrutiny both in private and in court.