Zara McDermott's terrifying brush with police in Thailand
Former Love Island star Zara McDermott had a terrifying brush with police in Thailand when she was filming her new BBC documentary The Dark Side of Paradise in Thailand.
Zara McDermott had a terrifying brush with police in Thailand when she was filming her new BBC documentary.
The former Love Island star headed to Bangkok to shoot Thailand: The Dark Side of Paradise but the crew got into trouble on the first night when they were attempting to capture footage in the city's red light district and one of them had an ashtray thrown at their head before the police attempted to move them along and seize their footage.
Speaking at the show's press launch, Zara explained: "The edit can only capture so much but realistically that was around an hour-and-a-half of our time and our crew got split up in that process.
"We were really trying to get out of that situation, but unfortunately with the language barrier and trying to communicate with the police and this is our first proper night and we didn’t really understand how to deal with a situation like that and what do you do?
"We were really lucky that we were able to get away in the end and not have to hand over our footage because we would have also lost the previous parts of that clip if we had to delete all the footage, it would have been quite a problem for us."
Zara insisted the crew had the correct permits to film there and the team struggled to understand why the police intervened.
According to The Sun newspaper, she added: "We were confused initially, we’d obviously done months of work, the team had done a lot of the leg work to make that possible.
"We’d jumped through all the hoops, we’d got the permission, we paid for a permit which is a fair amount of money for us and then to get there and feel so unwelcomed.
"I expected in some ways for the girls to not want to be on camera and for people to be ducking and diving away from the camera at certain points but to actually be told by the police you cannot film even though we jumped through all those hoops, it was a bit confusing for us, we didn’t know what to do."
Zara previously told the BBC "nothing could prepare" her for filming in Thailand.
She said: "I had done a lot of research beforehand, but nothing could prepare me for what I was about to see, especially when it came to the sex industry.
"I was shocked at some of the cheap, fake alcohol that was on sale, especially at the full moon party.
"Cannabis was incredibly easily accessible when I was there earlier this year."
Despite the serious subject matter, Zara is glad to have put "some more of [her] personality" into the documentary.
She said: "This series contains a bit more fun, and has some more of my personality injected into it, but at its core it asks important questions about the ethics of the sex industry, we meet some of the women working in it, it looks at justice (and injustice), it looks at social and moral principles."
The presenter noted she had to strike a balance with the film, making something "fun and entertaining" while still showing viewers the truth.
Zara explained: "I think this series is fun and entertaining, but I hope it questions what consequence looks like when you are thousands of miles from home.
"I hope that audiences will see that actions do have consequence, and you can’t just leave your inhibitions on the plane. "Sometimes these consequences can be unpredictable."
Thailand: The Dark Side of Paradise airs on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer from September 8,.
