Traitors Faithful Mollie Pearce says she has had to step away from social media amid abuse after her choice allowed Traitor Harry to take all the £95,150 prize money on the BBC show – leaving her with nothing. The disability model, 21, had initially chosen to banish friend Harry Clark in the final roundtable – but wiped his name and replaced it with Jaz at the last second.
That meant Harry, who had been lying to Mollie throughout the experience, won everything, while she and Jaz got nothing. Speaking to the Mirror Mollie said: “I’m trying to process it and get my head around it and I’m kind of trying to stay off socials a little bit because I think today is going to be a bit rough.
“But yeah, I’m hoping that it will pass. I think it’s very easy for the public to say that I was stupid and stuff like that but at the end of the day I’m 21 and I’ve got emotions – what could I do? I think people forget that you’re human when they’re watching it on TV, but we do all have feelings so people should be more cautious with their comments.”
Harry has said she and Mollie are friends again after the final scenes of the show saw her storming off. Mollie said: “We spoke after. We had quite a big laugh, to be honest. You know, you are good friends and someone had to win and we weren’t on the same team. It was either going to be me or him, so it would only be on the opposite foot if I didn’t change my vote.”
Mollie is keen to use her appearance on the show to be able to focus on shining a light on her disabilities. The model, who is missing a number of fingers on her right hand, was 11 when she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which is a chronic condition that involves the inflammation of the lower end of your digestive system. When she turned 18, she underwent an ileostomy to remove her colon, which left her needing a stoma.
“I definitely want to focus on advocating for my disabilities and really putting that out there,” she told us. “Especially for Crohns and colitis because it’s affected my life so much – I think it needs to be spoken about a lot more, so that’s definitely what I’m going to focus on.”
Harry Clark has said he hopes to go travelling next year with Mollie after he betrayed her during the show’s finale. The 22-year-old British Army engineer, from Slough, took home the whole £95,150 prize pot after he deceived disability model Mollie, 21, into thinking he was a fellow faithful when in reality he was a treacherous traitor.
The dramatic series final episode on Friday, which also saw faithful veterinary nurse Evie, traitor Andrew and faithful account manager Jaz all banished, had an average audience of 5.5 million, soaring past last year’s average of 3.3 million. Despite the deception, Harry said that his relationship with Mollie has got “even better” since they finished filming the show last year.
“Me and Mollie got on so well because, obviously, you spend so much time together and when there’s that few people, you’re with the same person who has the same interests”, he explained. “We’re both young and obviously we were both missing our partners, so we would just talk about them all the time and what we would do with the money and where we wanted to go and the things we wanted to do and the things we wanted to see.
“And now, with her partner and my partner, our friendship’s gotten even better because now we’re supporting each other since this whole thing began, this whole craziness, we’ve always been there for each other.”
Asked if he had considered sharing any of the prize fund, he said: “I don’t even want to think about the money and give it to my dad and be like ‘Treat my family’ and then put it in a bank where I keep adding to it and leave it… And then next year go somewhere nice and travelling or something like that, and then hopefully do it with Mollie and her fella, that’d be amazing.”
During the finale, fellow traitor Andrew and faithful Jaz turned on Harry as they both shared their suspicions about him. Harry admitted he initially thought he was going to sail through the final until Andrew went for him, which he said “flipped his world upside down”.
He recalled: “I was like ‘Oh, my gosh, I’ve been found out here and he’s taken the whole ship down with him’. And somehow I managed to keep my cool and just be like ‘That was really random’. I thought I was goner then until the moment of me, Jaz and Mollie.”
In the final banishment vote, Mollie initially chose Harry but then rubbed his name off her chalkboard after she asked him: “It’s not you?” and he confirmed he was not a traitor. Harry revealed he knew Mollie had written his name at first as she would not look at him so he ensured he locked eyes with her in an attempt to change her mind, which was successful.
The second series of the psychological reality show saw 22 contestants start playing the game of deception and detection, with players banished by the group or “murdered” by the traitors along the way. Harry, who was appointed as a traitor from the beginning, said he “felt guilty for everyone” that lost out.
“I was there for my reasoning, but everyone had their own reason and I feel like everyone deserves the chance of that much money and, obviously, I was the reason none of them got it”, he added. “So it was hard on myself but it was the game. And I hope if the shoe was on the other foot, they would do the same to me, and that’s what I told myself for the longest time.”
The British army engineer also hailed Mollie as an “amazing woman”, adding: “After she gave me the reassurance that she still loved me but hated me at the same time, but she just wanted me to know how good of a game I played, (and that) she couldn’t have said it went to anyone who deserved it more, that just shows her as a person as well and that made me feel 10 times better, obviously.”
Reflecting back to first being chosen as a traitor by host Claudia Winkleman, Harry revealed he had a moment of panic and no longer wanted to be picked. He said: “Before I went in there, I was telling Claudia I’d be a great traitor.
“(But) when I was sat there with the blindfold on, I was like ‘Oh my gosh, what have I done?’ I didn’t want to be tapped because the pressure I was under already and I haven’t even been tapped (I thought) ‘How am I going to lie to everyone’s face and keep a poker face?’ Then as soon as she tapped me I was like ‘Okay, cool. I’ve got a job to do now let’s get it done’.”
Throughout the show, Harry said he planned to spend the prize pot on his family but he revealed they now joke they will never be able to trust him again. “They already know when I set my mind to something, and I need a plan and something I can put in place, I’ll get it done”, he said.
“They laugh and joke about not being able to ever trust me again but they already know that I would do anything for them.”
The show’s finale saw a peak audience of 6.9 million, the BBC said.
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