Love Island’s Sophie Gradon felt like she had ‘sold her soul to ITV’, according to her mum.
The late reality star’s mother Deborah Gradon has penned a poignant letter in to ITV CEO Dame Carolyn McCall after she claimed it was “strange” to link Sophie’s suicide to her time on the dating show.
Slamming the comments, made on The Today programme, as “insensitive and tactless” both to her daughter and Mike Thalassitis, Deborah rages in The Sun that Carolyn was attempting to “belittle” their deaths.
She adds that it is “principally evil,” to separate the show from their suicides.
(Image: ITV)
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Branding producers “cunning” and “scheming,” she claims that Sophie didn’t apply to be on the show, but was scouted and “fast tracked” through the audition process as producers spotted her “vulnerability” and felt they could take advantage.
She also alleges that her daughter attempted to leave the programme as many as four times before she went home – by which point her anxiety was at an “unprecedented level”.
Despite this, Deborah claims that Sophie was offered little more than “a ten minute Skype call with a counsellor”.
After slamming the show as a “Machiavellian project,” she signs off: “It is an unspeakable loss. I feel the agony and all its attended miseries every day and I will continue to do so for the rest of my life.
(Image: ITV)
“In my beautiful darling daughter’s own words: ‘I sold my soul to ITV’.
“As a Mother yourself, I hope your hypocrisy and haughtily placed remarks sit well with your conscience.”
Mirror Online has contacted ITV for comment.
The 32-year-old reality star was found dead at her parents’ home in Medburn, Ponteland, on June 20, 2018.
She was found hanging in the living room by her boyfriend Aaron Armstrong and his brother Ryan, who had driven to her house after growing concerned at Sophie’s lack of social media activity.
Tragically, heartbroken Aaron was also found hanged just 20 days after she died.
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