For 28 years, the producer was the permanent leader and author of the program, to which thousands of viewers sent funny videos, but in 2019, the era of the show “Director Himself” ended. And this is not the only loss of Alexei Lysenkov.
In 1998, Aleksey Lysenkov received the well-deserved TEFI award for his work on the director’s own program. But the years flew by, YouTube was gaining momentum, and the concept of dubbing home videos on TV was hopelessly outdated. Was it easy to survive the ethereal death of your offspring?
Although the presenter always looked positive and cheerful on the screen, this did not mean that off-screen he was lucky in everything. Why did the TV star get divorced twice and broke up with his common-law wife Irina Cherichenko? And with whom is Alexey happy now? January 26, Lysenkov turns 57, and we answer these questions and more.
How he became his own director
Alexey was born in Kiev in the family of a teacher of Russian language and literature and an engineer. Since dad was sent on a long business trip to Romania, the boy went to school in Bucharest, but later returned with his family to Ukraine.
Since childhood, the child was attracted to the theater, but on the advice of his father, he entered the Kiev Polytechnic University. The young man lasted only two years at the university, after which he went to conquer the Shchukin School in Moscow. The idea was a success, and in his fourth year Lysenkov already became a trainee teacher with Yuri Katin-Yartsev, and after graduation he began teaching on the course of Yuri Avsharov at the alma mater.
In parallel, our hero served in the Ruben Simonov Drama Theater, and later moved to the MNDT under the leadership of Boris Lvov-Anokhin. However, the guy was more and more interested in directing, and he managed to realize his ambitions in this area on television.
In the mid-80s, Alexei began working on the Cheerful Guys show, then there were Ta-ra-ram Island, producing the program Welcome!
on RTR, “Race to the Bottom” on TVC and shooting in an advertisement for washing powder. But, undoubtedly, the first thing with which the name of Alexei Lysenkov is now associated is “The director himself”.
At first, the authors bartered out American videos, because having a camera at home at the dawn of the 90s was a luxury.
The scripts were written and the videos were skillfully re-voiced by the students of “Pike”: Eduard Radzyukevich, Alexander Zhigalkin, Mikhail Palatnik. “When we launched the program, not like YouTube, the Internet itself did not exist as such. And, of course, we did not think that we would be ahead of time in many ways. Years passed before the moment when journalists called me “the grandfather of Russian YouTube,” Lysenkov noted.
Unfortunately, over the years the program has lost its relevance. First, the show lost its “profitable” airtime, but on December 22, 2019, the last episode of the program took place. “Your own director” is a landmark program. She’s been with me all my life, it’s part of me, part of my family. And, of course, it is difficult for me to come to terms with its closure. I don’t know what to compare it to. It’s like if you love a person for many years, live with him – and suddenly it turns out that this person is not around, ”admitted Alexey.
Divorces
Before the eyes of the TV presenter was an example of a strong family of parents, and he dreamed that he would also marry once and for all his life. Lysenkov met the future economist Nadezhda at a student party. The youthful feeling led to the wedding after the second year of study and the birth of Nastya’s daughter.
It was not possible to repeat the path of the parents: gradually the spouses began to lose interest in each other, and the family was kept only because of a common child. Aleksey was inspired to take decisive action by a meeting with singer Sabina Muradyan at the Yerevan Flower Festival. A girl 11 years younger won the heart of a TV presenter.
“We dated for nine months until I left the family. I don’t think this is treason, because then my first wife Nadia and I were already just friends, ”concluded the producer in the program“ The Fate of a Man ”of the Russia 1 channel.
In the second marriage, the artist’s son Nikolai was born, and the fact that Sabina became friends with Alexei’s daughter from the first relationship was a pleasant bonus. Why did the union of spouses come to an end in 2004?
“I called Lesha to talk to his office and said that our feelings had become obsolete. In recent months, we constantly fought. In addition, it is no longer a secret to anyone, Lesha is a drinker.
And strongly. For seven years of marriage, I often left him for my parents. She filed for divorce two years ago. But then Alexei did his best to keep us together, ”Sabina told reporters.
Years later, Lysenkov assured that Muradyan told the press all these nasty things at the suggestion of her father: the father-in-law constantly interfered in the couple’s family affairs, and perhaps it was he who pushed Sabina to divorce.
Two attempts with Irina Cherichenko
Irina Cherichenko first met Lysenkov at the university: the guy studied a couple of courses younger. Sympathy arose with lightning speed, only Alexei had already managed to get married and at that moment was not going to leave his wife. “After the theatrical tour, we told each other that we were not ready to be together, as we are responsible not only for ourselves,” the TV presenter recalled.
During the years of separation, Irina managed to marry Valery Yaremenko, give birth to a son from businessman Arthur, survive several miscarriages and almost took the tonsure. After another love disappointment, the actress crossed paths with Alexei, and the meeting resulted in a civil marriage that stretched for nine years.
“He let me lead him. Traveling brought us together. At some point, we moved away from each other, it didn’t matter to him where I was filming, and to me what he was doing. I went back to work,” summed up Cherichenko.
And here is what Lysenkov himself said about parting with Irina. “We didn’t part in one day, it was a long process,” he explained to StarHit in 2015. – Ira has an apartment in Moscow, I have a house four kilometers from the capital. My wife began to visit him less and less, we spent little time together. Then we talked and decided: we need to leave. This is the second attempt to build a relationship, for the first time we were together in our student years – we met at the Shchukin school. Then the affair lasted several months. Recently I drove past VGIK, where Ira teaches. Called: “Shall we drink coffee?” We met, chatted … Now we are great friends.
The TV presenter emphasized that he warmly communicates with all former spouses, his children are friends with each other. Lysenkov enjoyed loneliness, but did not promise to marry again if he fell in love for real.
In 2016, the host’s friends had high hopes for a psychologist named Olga: it seemed that a blonde with several higher educations and a master’s degree in management conquered Alexei. Together, the lovers went on vacation to Montenegro and rested with loved ones, but the relationship did not last long.
Make-up artist of the show “Your own director”
“The first wife was an economist, the second was a singer, and now I have a wife, one might say, from television. As I joke, it was necessary to take at least something from the “Director for Yourself” program for personal use. And now my make-up artist from the program – Maria Caribbean – has been my common-law wife for several years. We don’t hide it, but we don’t advertise it too much. She is not a fan of making her personal life public, and after many circumstances I don’t really like to do this either, ”Alexey admitted a couple of years ago.
Maria was 19 years younger than Lysenkov, but this does not mean that she did not have time to sip grief in amorous affairs. So, Caribbean wrote in a microblog that she was involved in a toxic relationship, where the boyfriend not only drank and took out his anger on the cohabitant, but once also rushed to choke her in the middle of the day on the street.
This was not the only disappointment in the life of a make-up artist, however, we can say with confidence that everything changed when the TV presenter “To My Own Director” became more than a colleague for her. Maria moved to the producer’s two-story house in the Moscow region, and soon her microblog was filled with joint pictures with her common-law spouse and the charming Labrador Musha.
Together, the lovers traveled, attended social events and skied. By the way, a few years ago, Lysenkov paid for his passion for extreme sports with broken ribs: another athlete crashed into him on a slope. Nevertheless, Alexei did not change his old habits, and even attracted the chosen one to winter leisure. True, this year it was not possible to go to the mountains – in December, the presenter broke his leg, unsuccessfully falling in a television studio.
Alexey still creates projects for federal channels, works on the morning air of Zvezda and in the program “We win!” on NTV. Maria calls the presenter none other than her favorite magician, thanks him for the romantic moments spent and proudly posts a video where Lysenkov gives acting lessons at the university. It seems that despite the past losses and the closure of the show “The director himself”, our hero is quite happy and satisfied with his fate.
