Former Big Brother contestant Laura Carter says her 2016 appearance on the "toxic" reality television show left her broken and battling severe anxiety. Speaking on the RESET The Pod podcast, Carter expressed deep regret over her on-screen encounters with Marco Pierre White Jr, the troubled son of the chef Marco Pierre White.
On-screen encounters
Carter's actions on the programme a decade ago generated hundreds of Ofcom complaints. The series featured the pair having sex on camera, despite White having a fiancée outside the house. He claimed during the show that he had been given a "hall pass".
Carter described the encounters as "a regret that I have to live with for the rest of my life".
She contrasted the public reaction to Big Brother with the reception of other reality programmes.
"There were shows like Geordie Shore, there was Love Island going on where they were all literally at it like rabbits in there and it was all being championed," she said. "[But] Big Brother is not a show that you do that on."
Carter admitted regretting scenes where White said he wanted to "f**k her brains" before asking her to strangle him.
Camera shutters
Criticising the show's producers, Carter questioned the decision to broadcast the intimate moments.
"I was really very very upset, they didn't have to show it, did they? No, of course not," she said. "And also, it wasn't I'm sorry, but it wasn't exactly like we were, you know, going at it all guns blazing."
She said the encounters took place in the bedroom at night, where she felt contestants were trapped.
"Immediately after the shutters came up because when they put you to bed on the night, the lights go off and the shutters go down," she said. "So, you're trapped in the bedroom."
She added: "It was literally I'm not even kidding when I say, it was literally I think we were both like this, like completely still. You wouldn't have even known if the camera hadn't have zoomed right onto my face."
Carter said she entered the house feeling disliked and feared the broadcast scenes would give critics more ammunition.
"I'd gone into the show feeling like I wasn't liked," she said. "I felt like the Jouos were on the attack anyway. I thought, great, this is going to give everybody even more ammunition. I wanted to jump off a cliff."
Severe anxiety
Carter described the fallout from the broadcast as an "earthquake" that devastated her life.
"I wanted to literally just I wanted the ground to swallow me up and I just didn't know," she said. "It was the initial shock and devastation of everything just I felt like my whole world had imploded. I really did."
She questioned how producers allowed her to leave the house to a booing crowd, but said the blame also lay with the wider "toxic world that surrounds reality TV".
The aftermath of the show made Carter "very ill", she said, leaving her battling extreme anxiety and a fear of judgement.
"I was racked with anxiety. I had a huge social sanxiety," she said. "Um, I was so scared of people judging me. I couldn't go out or to family parties or anything without being so worried about the judgment."
The stress caused her weight to drop to 40kg, or about six and a half stone.
"I was so tiny that you could see my bones sticking out of my bum," she said. "Like, you could see my skeletal frame. I was so tiny."
Financial impact
Before entering Big Brother, Carter gained notoriety for claiming she had a threesome with the singer Justin Bieber at a London hotel in 2015.
Following the reality show, she experienced a dramatic drop in her income, eventually having to visit a benefits office.
"Something I have never told a soul... nobody knows this. I'd gone from earning 40 grand in a day for a commercial to having nothing," she said. "I couldn't believe it had got to that point. I stood up, said 'Thank you,' and walked out. That was the reset."
Carter said launching an account on the subscription platform OnlyFans ultimately turned her life around.
"Honestly, it saved my life," she said. "I went from sitting in the benefits office to having so much money a month later."
