It was the very definition of “different times”. In summer 2003, a TV dating series saw men compete for the affections of a 21-year-old Mexican model named Miriam Rivera. What her suitors didn’t realise was that the glamorous star of the show had a secret. In the climactic episode, Rivera announced that she was a transgender woman. All hell broke loose. Contestants sued the show in an attempt to ensure it never aired.
There’s Something About Miriam would go down in the showbiz hall of shame as one of the most controversial reality shows ever. Now, a Channel 4 docuseries revisits the making of the show 20 years since it aired – and five years since Rivera died at the age of 38. It’s a story of belief-beggaring insensitivity and its tragic aftermath.
In the new investigation, Miriam’s family tell the story of her turbulent childhood before transitioning. Named Hugo Cesar, she was assigned male at birth but always felt different to her three brothers, playing with dolls while they preferred baseball. When she was 11, she started taking hormones. Her disapproving father carried out an exorcism to “cure” her.
At 14, now called Miriam, she fled to Tijuana, then the US in search of a better life. Miriam found her niche on the New York ballroom scene. Fellow queen Nikki Exotika describes her in the film as “a sexy Latina siren” who “looked so feminine without many surgeries”. Rivera said, “I’ve had no operations except these”, pointing to her chest.
When she came to the UK to join transgender girl band Speed Angels, Miriam was spotted by TV producer Remy Blumenfeld. He cast her in a show made by his company Brighter Pictures, a subsidiary of Endemol. Blumenfeld said it was “a social experiment about gender and sexuality”, intended to be a positive onscreen representation. However, the British Medical Journal wrote: “The premise was not a celebration of transgender people’s lives. It was designed to elicit horror from the winning contestant, discovering that his dream date had a penis.”
Miriam’s childhood friend, Daniela Real, who calls her “my little sister”, had high hopes: “At first I was like, ‘Wow, Miriam hit the big time!’ I hoped it would be good for our trans community. I thought the world was ready, but obviously not. The ending was trash.”
The Sky One show flew “six red-blooded lads” to a £2m Ibiza villa to woo “one stunning babe”. They competed in challenges to win dates with Miriam. Whoever she ultimately selected won £10,000 and a romantic cruise aboard a luxury yacht. They weren’t told that she was a trans woman who hadn’t undergone gender-affirming surgery. There have been other reality shows that weren’t all they seemed – from Joe Millionaire to Jury Duty to the recent The Underdog: Josh Must Win – but none as crass.
Scene-setting narration from the show’s host, Blue Peter alumnus Tim Vincent, said: “These heroic guys have no idea that Miriam is as much Steve as Eve. As much Arthur as Martha. From the waist down, she’s a man.” This was the time of Little Britain’s “I’m a lady!” sketch. Terms such as cisgender and non-binary were not in common parlance.
“The fact that she had a penis seemed to be the punchline to a joke,” says the production’s psychologist, Dr Gareth Smith, now. “But it wasn’t a joke. It was Miriam and her life. These boys didn’t have the option to consent. It was cruelty television.” So ill-prepared were producers that Smith was only parachuted in for the finale to help contain the fallout. As he says: “Reality TV was brand new and a bit like the wild west.”
Among the cast was 22-year-old Aron Lane – now 42, a father of three and a fundraising manager. “We were whisked abroad, all expenses paid,” he says. “It was like a free lads’ holiday.” They’d applied for a fun-in-the-sun dating show called Find Me a Man. The title was later changed as a nod to the hit Hollywood romcom. As Smith says: “The subtext was that there’s something weird about Miriam and you’re going to be shocked by it.”
Huge effort went into keeping the secret. NDAs were signed. Producers made a point of never using pronouns, referring to Miriam as “the model” or “a beautiful person”. Contestants weren’t allowed to spend much time with her. Anyone who began to suspect was swiftly eliminated. Things got awkward when she and lifeguard Tom Rooke grew intimate. As the pair passionately kissed and his hands began to wander, panicking producers intervened, terrified that Rooke would discover the truth too soon.
As the series progressed, the crew grew increasingly uneasy about their part in the deceit, dreading what might happen at the big reveal. “There were suddenly lots of big, intimidating guys around,” says Lane. “They’d drafted in bouncers from local clubs as extra security. That was when we knew something was afoot.”
Miriam chose Rooke as the winner and told the assembled contestants: “I tried to be as honest as I could. Yes, I am from Mexico, I am a model and I’m 21. Tom, I love spending time with you and kissing you. You see, I love men and I love being a woman. But I am not a woman. I was born as a man.” Daniela suspects this was scripted: “Miriam wouldn’t say it that way. She was classier and more subtle. It made her a clown in a circus.”
Miriam’s disclosure was met with nervous giggling. Rooke was lost for words. Runner-up Scott Gibson, a martial arts instructor, was so enraged that he vandalised the set and chased the director around the pool. Smith told the show’s creator: “Remy, make yourself scarce because they’re going to kill you.”
“Suddenly everything happened at a million miles per hour,” says Lane. “Cameramen were crying. Miriam got swept off and we never saw her again. I would’ve liked a conversation about what she might have been going through. We’ll never have that opportunity.”
While contestants had each other for support – “We formed a brotherhood, bonded by our shared experience,” says Lane – Miriam was left isolated. “My sister was exploited, then abandoned,” says Miriam’s youngest brother Ariel Mendoza, the closest to her of all the siblings. “She was alone in a foreign country. Miriam was a tough girl but it broke her.” “I really think they used her,” says Real. “The boys got more help than Miriam.”
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On the flight home, they plotted revenge. The men filed a joint lawsuit, seeking an injunction to prevent broadcast. They settled out of court for a sum rumoured to be £3m but actually nearer £500,000, half of which went on legal fees. The case created a media storm, mostly mocking Miriam. Lurid headlines included “Oi, Miriam, you bloke the rules” and “Big Miss-take”. The outrage was targeted at a 21-year-old woman, rather than the TV executives who’d put her in this position.
“She was upset when they sued the show,” says Mendoza. “The press trashed her. People blamed her. Some still do. I recently saw a Facebook reel saying ‘Look who fooled some guys on TV by pretending to be a woman’. After the show, Miriam went down and down. She looked sad whenever it was mentioned. Maybe she was ahead of her time but I hope her story teaches tolerance.”
The show was slated to air in November 2003. Legal proceedings delayed its airing until February 2004. Thanks to the hype, nearly a million viewers tuned in – big ratings for Sky at the time. Miriam was hailed as “Britain’s first transgender TV star”, but her shameful treatment contrasted starkly with the positive response to Nadia Almada, a Portuguese-born trans woman who won Endemol stablemate Big Brother just a few months later.
After an initial burst of notoriety, work dried up for Miriam. She went back to the US but the scandal followed her. Friends believe she had PTSD, precipitating a dark descent into drugs. In 2007, she fell in suspicious circ*mstances four storeys from her apartment balcony, leaving her in critical condition. She later disappeared for six months, and claimed she had been kidnapped at gunpoint and forced into sex slavery.
Robbed of everything, she returned home to Mexico. In 2019, Miriam was found dead in her mother’s apartment – in a tragic twist, on exactly the same spot as her eldest brother Luis 13 years previously. It was officially recorded as suicide. Some claimed foul play but Mendoza and Real are sceptical. Real believes the show gave Miriam fame and it was fame that killed her. “She’d gone from being a big star to a small town.”
“Miriam was struggling with depression,” says Mendoza. “She’d always provided for our family. Now she was back home with nothing. Our mum, Maria, just wanted to blame someone. It was her second time going through that loss. She’s the strongest person I know but it broke her heart. She’ll never be the same again.”
“I don’t regret the lawsuit,” says Lane. “Our beef was with the TV company, not Miriam. I do regret her becoming collateral damage and the domino effect it might’ve had. She was like a prisoner in her own TV show. A character rather than a person. They made her a laughing stock, which was cruel. I would’ve loved to make this documentary with Miriam still with us. It’s desperately sad.”
Sky apologised and removed There’s Something About Miriam from all its platforms. Yet it stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when TV loses its moral compass, leaving traumatised participants in its wake.
Miriam: Death of a Reality Star is on Channel 4 at 9pm on 29 April and runs across three consecutive evenings.
