Former Love Island star Molly-Mae Hague has claimed people ‘find her controversial’ after she was slammed for her comments on wealth inequality back in 2021
Reality TV star Molly-Mae Hague has claimed people find her “quite controversial” following her famous comments on wealth inequality.
Back in 2021, the Love Island star was slammed after she made some controversial comments during her interview with Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO podcast. She told the Dragons’ Den star how she’s “worked her arse off” to make her millions and claimed “everyone has the same 24 hours in a day” to emulate her success.
Molly-Mae’s comments went down like a led balloon on social media with many accusing the star, who rose to fame as a teenager on the ITV2 dating show, of being ‘tone deaf’ and not acknowledging the huge amount of privilege she has. Others quickly dubbed her ‘the new Margaret Thatcher.’
“You’re given one life and it’s down to you what you do with it. You can literally go in any direction,” Molly-Mae said in the infamous video in December 2021. “When I’ve spoken about that in the past I have been slammed a little bit, with people saying ‘it’s easy for you to say that because you’ve not grown up in poverty, so for you to sit there and say we all have the same 24 hours in a day is not correct.’ But, technically, what I’m saying is correct. We do.”
She continued: “I understand we all have different backgrounds and we’re all raised in different ways and we do have different financial situations, but I think if you want something enough you can achieve it. It just depends on what lengths you want to go to get where you want to be in the future. And I’ll go to any length. I’ve worked my absolute a**e off to get where I am now.”
Fuming fans quickly ripped her comments apart online, with footage of Molly-Mae struggling to handle a 12-hour shift at a PrettyLittleThing warehouse in order to see how it worked going viral. Almost three years on from the scandal, Molly-Mae has reflected on her past comments.
Speaking to British Vogue about her notorious comments and the backlash, the mum-of-one told the publication: “Obviously, I meant absolutely no malice or anything ill-intended by that comment at all. Would I have worded it slightly differently now? One-hundred per cent, as to not upset anybody. But you’re not always going to get it right, living your life in the public eye.’ ‘People find me quite controversial.”
Elsewhere in her interview with British Vogue, Molly-Mae said her split from her former fiancé Tommy Fury came as “a bit of a shock” as she had planned to marry him next September. The pair, who met on the hit ITV dating show Love Island in 2019, announced they had split in separate social media messages in August, prompting speculation around the reasons for their separation.
In her first interview since the break-up, Molly-Mae said she “didn’t want what happened to happen” but she still has “a lot of love and respect” for the professional boxer. The reality TV star and influencer, 25, said: “It was a bit of a shock, the circumstances… I didn’t want what happened to happen.”
She added that she wanted to get married to Tommy “100%” and that “would never have changed”. Molly and Tommy, who were the runners-up on Love Island season five in 2019, got engaged in July 2023. The pair welcomed their daughter Bambi into the world in January 2023.
In Molly-Mae’s Instagram post in August, she said she was “extremely upset” to announce they would be parting ways. Tommy posted a separate Instagram story less than an hour later which said he was “heartbroken” to share the news, adding that Bambi was their “priority”.
He later described “false allegations” over his break-up as “horrendous” and “heartbreaking”. Following the split, Fury also said he would love Molly-Mae “til the day I die.”
Follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads
