Mother Reveals Final Days of Dom-2 Star Liberzh Kpadonu
It has been almost two years since the death of one of the brightest participants of the Dom-2 project – Liberzh Kpadonu, but contradictory rumors about the causes of her death still circulate: allegedly she died after a medical operation, lay dead for more than a month, was unhappy and awaited death. UFA1.RU spoke with Liberzh«s mother, who told why she passed away and how the family still cannot recover from the loss of their only daughter.
To recall, Liberzh is the daughter of Benin native Gilbert Kpadonu and Russian woman Nadezhda, born in St. Petersburg, lived in Ufa for several years, engaged in dancing and singing, and at age 23 became a participant in the popular reality show Dom-2. After leaving the project, she went into business, but fell seriously ill, and in spring 2024 her death was announced.
«I always said that for my daughter, I was the laundress-cook, and for her soul, she had her dad. Jokingly, of course. In reality, we talked a lot, almost every day,» recalls Nadezhda Kpadonu in a conversation with UFA1.RU. «We invested our whole life in Liberzh. We saved up, gathered, prepared. And now all that remains. Gilbert holds on only by his character. He goes to work, communicates with people, but he is tired, very tired.»
According to her, her husband and their daughter had a special bond. Liberzh herself during her life also often spoke very warmly of her father. However, he was the last to learn that his daughter had participated in a television project with a controversial reputation, criticized for its format and the shocking behavior of participants. According to Nadezhda, her daughter also didn«t tell her right away that she had gotten »on TV.«
«I myself didn»t watch this show, but people could tell me they saw my daughter on TV, so Liberzh warned me. But we didn«t tell dad for a long time. In September–October Liberzh went on the project, and only on December 30, when the project showed a New Year»s concert, I sat Gilbert in front of the TV and explained everything to him. Liberzh performed the song «Hallelujah.» And Gilbert is a very, very religious man. He liked the song. Liberzh, after all, attended music school and could hit four octaves like it was nothing,« recounts Nadezhda.
Liberzh explained her decision to participate in Dom-2 as an opportunity to start a music career. In one episode, she saw Gleb Zhemchugov, who was rapping at the time, and went to the casting to find out how to meet him and arrange a duet.
«The producers, seeing an unusual girl who could speak and held herself well in front of cameras, quickly realized: we must take her. They told her: »We won«t introduce you to Gleb, but if you participate in the project, you can see him yourself.» They took her without any casting or auditions. Well, later, of course, it turned out that Gleb was quite the rapper,« says Liberzh»s mother.
The girl with an exotic appearance and a lively character was loved by the show«s viewers as well. Liberzh gained her own fanbase, who watched the program exclusively for her. When she left the project, many migrated to her blog, where she talked about her life.
«All of Liberzh»s social media followers were so fiercely protective of her that if someone with negative comments appeared, she herself didn«t even have time to respond — her fans would pounce on critics so quickly. She had a very good crowd [in her blog]. They would stand up for her. After all, her blog was somewhat different from the social media of most public figures. She would just go online and chat with her followers like girlfriends. She»d get up in the morning, start a recording and say: «Well, girls, shall we have some coffee? What are we cooking today? Toss me a recipe,»« explains Nadezhda Kpadonu.
But among the Dom-2 participants, many disliked her. However, the show«s format implies conflicts and subsequent showdowns, which give viewers food for discussion.
«I recently rewatched the Dom-2 footage when [project participant Abigalova] Irina Aleksandrovna gathered others around her to kick Liberzh out. But my daughter — was truly a very strong person. Without any swearing, but very skillfully and harshly, with steel in her voice, she pointed out the others» sore spots. At that moment, most of the viewers switched to Liberzh«s side because, whatever they said, the audience is not blind and senses who is who. Irina Aleksandrovna understood that such a person could not be broken, but she and her friends gathered votes to expel Liberzh, and still the administrators kept her. Because she was bright,» Nadezhda is convinced.
But in Dom-2, Liberzh did not manage, as the show«s motto went, to »find her true love.« At that, she even married one of the project participants — Yevgeny Rudnev.
«People like him feel like a fish in water in Dom-2. I would like to say their marriage was a sham, but good girls are always drawn to the wrong guys,» said Liberzh«s mother. »The most hurtful thing is that she [after leaving the project] finally met a good man. A very worthy man, with a honors degree and a serious business, with a good sense of humor. Similar to my Gilbert. Liberzh probably intuitively already understood that a man of that type was what she needed.«
According to Nadezhda, on TV, quarrels with some colleagues reached such extremes that producers hesitated to air them. Thus, due to a conflict between Liberzh and Ilya Yabbarov, the help of the Benin embassy was almost required. Nadezhda cites racial insults as the reason.
«Liberzh forwarded me recordings of what Ilya Yabbarov said to her off-camera,» recalls the mother of the TV show participant. «I said then: »Either you sue him, or I«ll do it myself.» She met with a lawyer, and he unequivocally said the case was a sure win. Then she sent me screenshots from the correspondence with Yabbarov, where it«s clear how he got scared and asked her not to file a complaint.»
Nadezhda explained that the Kpadonus had faced rudeness before due to the skin color of the family«s head. So, back in Ufa, as a schoolgirl, Liberzh had to fight with other girls.
«In fact, back then skin color didn»t play the key role, it only served as a catalyst,« noted Liberzh»s mother. «The girls were simply too embarrassed to say the reason was plain jealousy. One of them was in love with another school pupil who started talking to Liberzh. Of course, the appearance of a pretty mixed-race girl in the class immediately drew attention. Others started picking on Liberzh, insulting her about her skin color. Apparently, they didn»t expect that a thin and fragile girl could fight back, but she just tossed them all aside.«
Nadezhda herself, before meeting Gilbert, only knew about his native Benin from textbooks. Meeting him, she saw an African in person for the first time. At that time, Nadezhda lived in Oktyabrsky, where the mining institute sent foreign students for training.
«Gilbert was 25, I was 22. My family had temporarily moved to barracks on the outskirts of the city in Zaitovo during repairs, and Gilbert with a friend and a girlfriend ended up there because they got lost while looking for the »Fountain« cinema in the center. I came out to the bus stop and heard shouting: »Miss! Miss!« They spoke half in Russian, half — in English. My English is good. I looked at them and thought: »God, how scary,«» admitted Nadezhda.
Nevertheless, she agreed to escort the foreigners to the cinema, and while the whole company was making their way, Nadezhda and Gilbert started talking.
«In about 40 minutes I realized I liked him a lot. He was very thoughtful, you could see he pondered every phrase so everything would sound correct. And he speaks Russian, since for him our language is not native, not like most people, plainly, but beautifully, literarily. He has very interesting, literate speech. He hooked me precisely with his behavior, mind, intellect. By appearance, he and his friend from Madagascar seemed completely identical to me, both tall, slender. Later Gilbert told me that for them, European girls all look the same too, only height differs,» says Kpadonu.
At the same time, Nadezhda«s mother had already been told that she had seen her daughter on the street with some Africans. She became very worried for her daughter.
«She said: »Nadya, but he came and will leave, and you will stay. How will you get married later? Everyone will doubt your decency. It«s a stigma.» Who could have believed then that Gilbert and I would spend over 40 years together,« recalls the now wife of the Benin native.
He proposed to his new acquaintance on the very first day. After living with him for several years, she realized how uncharacteristic that step was for her husband: all so thoughtful, calm, and suddenly asks to marry a girl he met by chance.
«He himself says: »I don«t understand, it»s as if it wasn«t me.» Later, when we came to visit Liberzh on Dom-2 and Gilbert was asked if he regretted marrying a Russian woman, he said that if he had to do it again, he would do it without thinking,« recounts Nadezhda.
She admits that she herself has never regretted that fateful meeting in her life. She speaks of her husband as a good man with a very masculine character, everything aimed at the family«s good. Of course, there were quarrels. But, according to Nadezhda, the rudest thing she ever heard from her husband was: »Ah! You«re a complete fool!»
«To drive him to that, you have to try. That»s his upbringing: the man is responsible for everything. Even if the woman turns out to be quarrelsome, the man is to blame for not being able to convey things correctly,« explains the Russian woman.
Gilbert«s parents did not object to their son»s beloved. His father promptly sent all the necessary documents for marriage registration and even came to Russia to expedite matters through the embassy and municipality. However, everything stalled so much that the couple registered just nine days before their daughter«s birth.
«When I took the first photo of Liberzh, I sent it to both my mother and Gilbert»s mother. My mother later wrote: «Oh, Nadya, I went around to friends, showed off and boasted that my granddaughter is dark-skinned.» Gilbert«s mother — the opposite: »I ran around relatives, showed photos, everyone liked her, and I boasted that my granddaughter is fair-skinned,«» tells Nadezhda.
Soon the whole family went to Benin«s capital, Cotonou. Nadezhda admits that the road from the airport to the city made a somewhat frightening impression on her.
«On the way, we passed small villages where children ran half-dressed, barefoot. Later I understood that this is largely due to the weather,» explains the Russian woman. «Cotonou is a normal capital city of reinforced concrete, cars drive, Japanese and many French, Benin used to be a French colony, so they use Renault. Their market »Messibo« is simply huge, colorful. There everyone came up to me, touched me, took photos.»
Another time Liberzh went to Africa at age 4–5 only with her dad. There they spent about one and a half to two months, and upon return shocked Nadezhda.
«As I»m undressing my daughter, I talk to her, and she answers me in Fon (one of the languages of Benin. — Ed.). I ask: «Liberzh, do you even understand me?» And she — again in Fon. I even cried. Gilbert returned and started talking to her: «That»s it, we«re home, switch to Russian because mom doesn»t understand.« Two or three days passed, her Russian language recovered. But what horror I experienced then,» recounts Nadezhda.
The Kpadonus still live in Russia. According to Liberzh«s mother, despite occasionally encountered prejudices, she felt comfortable both in Ufa, and in St. Petersburg, and in Moscow. She ended the conflict with the same Ilya Yabbarov herself.
«Liberzh calls me and says: »Mom, I forgive everyone.« Now I think that at that moment she most likely received the results of medical tests,» laments Nadezhda.
She emphasizes that many «diagnoses» given to her daughter posthumously by various experts on numerous TV shows and news reports are false. According to the medical conclusion, no alcohol or drugs were found in the deceased«s blood. In fact, shortly before her death, Liberzh was discovered to have diabetes.
«She had a habit: she would run very hot water so everything would warm up, wait for it to cool to an acceptable temperature, and only then get in. Apparently, that»s what happened this time too. She filled the bathtub, turned off the water, started waiting, was watching something on her phone and lost consciousness,« says Nadezhda.
The sudden death could have been triggered, in her opinion, by Liberzh«s »terrible« habit of lowering her blood sugar through prolonged fasting. Note that doctors strictly forbid such practice because it does not treat but, on the contrary, provokes an attack.
«I told her a thousand times that you can»t do that,« recounts Kpadonu. »Sometimes we talked by video at night, and she checked her sugar in front of me, and there were some crazy numbers. I told her: «Liberzh, give yourself an injection.» In front of me, she gave the injection. But the report states that there was nothing in either the stomach or the rectum. Apparently, she ate nothing before death,« says the mother of the deceased.
Nadezhda said that her daughter did not tell her parents everything about her health problems. According to her mother, Liberzh always tried to be independent, decided everything on her own, tried not to worry her mom and dad. Even before the tragedy, she periodically disappeared from the radar, having warned beforehand that she was fine and would return soon.
«When she first ended up in the hospital [in October 2024], she didn»t tell us anything. Also didn«t make contact for a week, only wrote before that that everything was normal with her. I thought maybe she went for filming or somewhere else. After a week, she calls and tells that she was lying in the hospital. »But everything«s fine now, don»t worry.« When she faced surgery, I already wanted to start packing to go to her. Visiting was prohibited in the hospital, but I could at least come with care packages. Just so she would feel support nearby. She said: »No.« She always tried to bear the hardest things herself. Such a silly character, and I have the same,» admits Nadezhda.
In February 2024, an operation was also needed for Gilbert. Before accompanying her husband to the hospital, Nadezhda called her daughter.
«I also asked: »How«s your sugar?» She says: «Oh, I»ll manage.« And then said: »Mom, just in case: I gathered all the gold and hid it there, and put the documents there.« I got angry: »What nonsense?« I said that as soon as dad has the operation, I»ll come. She asked to give the phone to him. They talked about something in French. I didn«t listen, and then asked my husband: »Well, what?« Gilbert said they talked about various abstract topics. And then he says: »Something about her voice sounded sad.« The last thing I could think was that she would die,» says Liberzh«s mother.
Liberzh«s body was cremated, and the ashes were buried in Ufa. One of the participants was Liberzh»s last beloved, about whom her mother spoke so warmly earlier. According to Nadezhda, he came to see the deceased off and lay a bouquet of flowers by her body.
«At the funeral service, the coffin was opened. She lay as if alive — delicate skin, hair,» says Nadezhda Kpadonu.
After their daughter«s death, Gilbert decided that he and his wife should convert to Orthodoxy. He grew up in a Catholic family that, according to Nadezhda, strictly adheres to religious rules. But Liberzh was allowed to be baptized at St. Isaac»s Cathedral in Petersburg when she was still a teenager.
«I am not religious, but Gilbert sincerely believes, goes to church every Sunday. He decided that we must convert to Orthodoxy so that after death we can meet Liberzh in the afterlife,» explains Nadezhda.
To recall, in 2008 another Dom-2 participant from Ufa died tragically. Oksana Aplekaeva was found on a highway near Moscow — raped and strangled. The story of how she shone on the show but also didn«t settle there, and later became a murder victim, read in the UFA1.RU article.
