Json response with special characters doesn't display data on production

[tomvb]

I'm loading results from my database and displaying via response()->json(array($data), 200);

On my local leaf serve development server (MacOS) data with special characters (é) is displaying fine. On development, I get a blank screen. There's no error in my logs. Using the Leaf debug to file method shows the data.

I'm guessing it has to do with the json response, and possibly with the database encoding. But I can't find out what exactly. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Debug data:

DEBUG - stdClass Object
(
    [postcode] => 1057HR
    [huisnummer] => 180
    [buurt] => De Wester Quartier
    [wijk] => Chassébuurt
    [gemeente] => Amsterdam
)

Using:

"leafs/leaf": "^3.0",
"leafs/db": "^2.1",
"leafs/devtools": "^0.1.0",
"leafs/logger": "^1.3"

On php 7.4.33, CentOS 7, MariaDB 10.5.23

Database is using CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_general_ci. Same for tables and fields.