38 • The Sunday Times Magazine
collaborators. “That’s not something
Molly speaks about,” Fran says, tersely.
It’s a disappointing response but hardly
surprising given how precarious an
influencer’s existence can be. According
to professionals who work on influencer
campaigns, most of them have a limited
shelf life and one controversial remark
can easily demolish their whole profile.
Last year Hague appeared on a podcast
and offered this wisdom: “Beyoncé has the
same 24 hours in the day that we do ...
You’re given one life, and it’s down to you
what you do with it.” It was a fair summary
of her own constant commitment to the
hustle, but social media lit up with people
informing her that this was in fact a very
privileged and problematic thing to say. She
was tagged “Thatcher with a fake tan” and
eventually apologised for causing offence.
Yet there is something Thatcherish about
Hague. Like Thatcher she has a ferocious
work ethic. Like Thatcher you suspect she
genuinely doesn’t understand why other
people just can’t be as focused as her. And,
like Thatcher, she’s a lower-middle-class
girl made good. The child of two police
officers, she grew up in Hitchin,
Hertfordshire, where she went to the Priory
School, a mixed comprehensive. (Her older
sister, Zoe, followed more closely in their
parents’ footsteps by joining the army.)
More important than her formal
education, though, were the after-school
activities: singing, cello lessons, choir. At
Hague’s insistence her mother drove her
to endless auditions, although she never
made it further than the chorus. She had
more success with Irish dancing, placing
fourth in the All England competition.
However, what she enjoyed most, she
realised, wasn’t the dancing itself: it was
getting dolled up. As a self-described “girly
girl”, it was the elaborate wigs, the fake tan
and the make-up that she loved.
Around the age of 14 or 15, she writes in
the book, her parents told her they were
separating. “That’s something that I’ve
never spoken about in detail before,” she
tells me. “But it was something I felt was
key because I get a lot of girls talking to
me about ‘my parents are getting divorced
right now, I’m really struggling’.” Writing
the book was, she says, “like therapy ...
You revisit emotions you suppressed.”
After finishing her GCSEs, Hague
decided she would go to the Fashion Retail
Academy in London — which helped to
up her outfit game for the ’gram. She also
started competing in beauty pageants (she
was crowned World Teen Supermodel UK
2016-17). But she’d realised by then that
what she actually wanted to do was be a
full-time influencer. “I was blessed that
I jumped on the bandwagon at the right
time. When I started it was a humongous
thing, but there was still room to grow.”
One of her role models was the Australian
influencer Tammy Hembrow, who used
lots of different backgrounds. Hitchin
didn’t offer an abundance of options so,
aged 18, she moved to Manchester. (Most
of her posts tagged there are bar interiors,
though she says she’s not a big drinker.) It
put her closer to the brands she wanted to
work with, particularly PrettyLittleThing,
whose head office is based there.
The real break came with Love Island.
She applied in 2018 but did not make it past
the audition stage. In 2019 the producers
approached her. “Even before I went for
that audition I knew I was going to be on
the show ... I manifested it,” she writes.
Hague is a big believer in “manifesting”,
which — like “blessed” — is one of social
media’s favourite concepts. It means,
essentially, willing your goals into existence.
She went in with 160,000 Instagram
followers and came out with nearly three
million. But she also fell in love: she andFury (who is also 23) came second in the
show and, unlike the actual winners, have
been together ever since.
It wasn’t all plain sailing. She came off as
cynical to some viewers, particularly those
who already knew her as an influencer. She
was trolled relentlessly on social media.
Comments on her “fakeness” abounded,
and the nickname “Money-Mae” took off.
Love Island has received some criticism
over the treatment of contestants in
recent years, following the suicides of two
former participants (Mike Thalassitis and
Sophie Gradon) and the host Caroline
Flack. In none of these cases did the
coroner name Love Island as a direct factor,
but it focused attention on the ruthlessness
with which reality TV can treat the people
it features.
Hague has no complaints, though. “I can’t
fault the team. When we came out of the
show they were incredible,” she says. “I feel
like they’d be there for me if I needed
anything.” Even so, she says she has no
plans to make more reality television. “No,
I don’t think going back into TV is for me.”
She can’t wait to get engaged and marry
Fury. His similarly vertiginous path to fame
via the show means he is well positioned
to support her through the rough patches.
“He does get it 110 per cent. Because he
goes through it as well every day, in a
slightly different way — it’s different for
boys.” Different how? “Body shaming is
more typical for women to experience,
which is really, really bad.”
Has fame made her less trusting? “I can
count on one hand the friends that I have,”
she says. Then she brightens: “But then
really, I have, like, six million of them, so
it’s like a nice balance.” #blessed nAbove: Molly-Mae, second from left, with her mother, Debbie,
older sister, Zoe, and father, Stephen, enjoying a holiday in France,- Below: out for dinner with her mum in 2013, aged 14
COURTESY OF MOLLY MAE