Gemma Collins has opened up about returning to the jungle, describing her second stint on I’m A Celebrity as a transformative experience.
The former TOWIE star originally took part in the 2014 series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! but quit the show after just three days in camp, becoming one of the shortest-serving contestants in the programme’s history.
Her brief stint in the Australian jungle nevertheless produced several memorable moments, including a dramatic Bushtucker Trial in which she repeatedly shouted the show’s famous catchphrase: “I’m a Celebrity… get me out of here!”
Determined to rewrite the narrative, she headed back for the upcoming all-stars edition in South Africa.
Speaking at Sky’s Up Next event on Wednesday, she told The Standard: “I was absolutely so disappointed in myself that I gave up last time. It’s always hung over my head, so when they came to me again, I was like: ‘Yeah, baby, I’m going back.’”
The new series, which reunites former contestants including Adam Thomas, Scarlett Moffatt and Ashley Roberts, is understood to be more demanding than the original Australian format.
Unlike the live show, it has been pre-recorded, meaning Collins already knows how her journey unfolds and dropped a hint of how she fares.
She continued: “And I'm so grateful for the opportunity. And to be honest, it was the best thing I ever did, because I do well in.”
Turning to her fiancé, Rami Hawash, she added with a smile: “You were shocked, weren’t you?”
Hawash replied: “I was thinking: ‘Another day, another day, another day can’t be right? No, no way. Someone’s lying to me’”, prompting Collins to joke: “No one had faith in me.”
More seriously, she said the experience had changed her perspective.
She reflected: “To be honest, I feel so much stronger since I come out the jungle. Like as a woman. I think self-esteem wise people probably think I've got loads of it, but doing something like the jungle came away, and I was like, ‘wow, I am strong inside really’.”
Elsewhere, Collins became emotional as she spoke about her forthcoming Sky docuseries, Gemma Collins: Four Weddings and a Baby, which charts her plans to marry Hawash and her journey with IVF.
Reflecting on her filming experience, the TV star described filming as “the hardest thing” she has done.
“It’s been the hardest thing for me to make because I’m really letting you in. It’s not been comfortable at all,” she said.
The series also captures a difficult period in her personal life, including her mother Joan’s hospitalisation late last year and almost died, which Collins called a “nightmare”.
“This is a show where I’m trying to have a baby, I’m trying to get married and none of it goes smooth,” she shared. “It’s a nightmare. It’s not a comical nightmare, it’s a real nightmare.
“During making the show my mum almost died, our relationship was obviously taking a bit of a hit, I was trying to have a baby. My whole world just fell apart.”
Collins said the experience stripped away her usual on-screen persona.
“Because I was going through so much, there was no performative person there so everyone gets to see me, the real me…” she shared. “It’s me not having control over my life, any control over the cameras, it’s very raw and it’s very different from anything I’ve done before.”
