Another wrote, “Michaella McCollum isn’t a celebrity, she’s a criminal.” But who actually is Celebrity SAS’s Michaella McCollum?

Who is Celebrity SAS’s Michaella McCollum?

Michaella McCollum was convicted of drug smuggling back in 2013. She and Melissa Reid were stopped at Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru and were found to be smuggling £1.5 million worth of cocaine in their luggage.

The pair claimed that they had been forced to smuggle the drugs by a gang. They pleaded guilty to the crime and were sentenced to almost seven years in a Peruvian prison. McCollum and Reid only served three years and were released in 2016. They were known by the media as the “Peru Two.”

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McCollum was 19 at the time of her conviction. “I was partying a lot… I just thought I was having fun, I trusted these people. It just kind of snowballed, and I would find myself in a situation I couldn’t come back out of,” she reflected during a recent appearance on ITV’s This Morning.

As for her time in prison in Peru, McCollum shared: “I mean it’s obviously extreme, but I feel like I was incredibly adaptable, like I just kind of got along with it… But I feel like it made me an amazing person.”

Why did Michaella McCollum join the cast of Celebrity SAS?

In the same interview, McCollum opened up about her decision-making process before entering the show. As she explained, she had previously received other offers for other reality shows, but this was the one she wanted to do. “SAS, there’s no other show like that, so I thought it would be a really good way to test myself and try and push myself and do something completely different,” she said.