Too Hot to Handle’s Ethan Smith opens up about feeling “gutted” after he was edited on the show to be a villain.

Chatting to hosts Bobby Norris and Stephen Leng on the showbiz gossip programme Access All Areas, the reality star spoke candidly about the moment he realised that they had misrepresented him on screen: “I was shocked. I knew I was on there for a certain reason, there’s always a villain. I get that. I understand it but it was just to the extreme. When I watched it, I was with Seb [Melrose] and Creed [McKinnen] from the show… They were sat there with me and they were just saying “oh f***, that’s pretty bad! I can’t believe they’ve done that.” It’s reality TV and I think you’ve got to accept it. What you do after is what makes you as a person.” 

He continued: “I was gutted, I was real upset about it. My ex rang me up when she watched it and said “that’s just not you. Why have they done that?” She rang me up crying. It really had a big impact. I didn’t get much hate; I just didn’t get much support. I personally don’t feel like the show didn’t give a good outlook of what I’m really like. At the moment I’m trying to rectify that and show people that I am a nice person and I’m not the type of lad that they made me look like. There were worse off people.

Later in the interview, the 26-year-old opened up about an incident on the show where he was particularly upset by the editing: “There was a bit of a situation where I was talking about someone’s boobs. I said about Imogen’s [Ewan] boobs “are they real?” But there was actually a conversation before that. This was the comment that’s done me in. It was a comment saying “are your boobs real?” and then her reaction wasn’t her reaction, it was actually from the conversation before. It just got edited that way. I was really upset about that.”

Listen to the full episode, also featuring Chaz Lowery and Chloe Veitch here.