On Set With Molly-Mae: How Britain’s Biggest Influencer Built an Empire Out of Oversharing (Exclusive)
“Everyone wants a piece of Molly-Mae.”
It’s early August and the set is a festive wonderland. A long table sits at the center with brown and pink macarons stacked neatly in the shape of a Christmas tree. Silver martini glasses are arranged next to chocolates and an assortment of wrapped gifts circle a large iced cake that glistens under the harsh studio lights. Demi Doyle, producer on Amazon Prime Video docuseries Molly-Mae: Behind It All, is beaming at the wings. “I don’t think she actually realizes how much people love her and invest in her life,” Doyle tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Molly-Mae Hague soon emerges from a plume of hairspray — her signature blonde blowout expertly styled — ready to shoot a Christmas commercial for British beauty megastore LookFantastic. But behind the cameras waits an entirely separate crew, poised to capture the shoot’s behind-the-scenes moments. When the LookFantastic team yell cut, Hague’s posse immediately resumes filming on the second season of Behind It All from the dressing room. The woman’s on two sets at once.
Working two jobs at the same time is an apt summary of the hustle that has so far defined the career of the U.K.’s biggest influencer, who is the de facto poster child for girlboss content creation across the pond. THR‘s top international influencers list dubs Hague, proud owner of fashion brand Maebe, Britain’s answer to Kim Kardashian. Just last week, she hit the runway for L’Oréal’s Paris Fashion Week show alongside Kendall Jenner, Cara Delevingne, Eva Longoria, Heidi Klum and Andie MacDowell, to name a few.
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Love Island fans in the U.S. will no-doubt recognize Hague as the 2019 runner-up of ITV’s hit show, where she met boxer Tommy Fury (brother of heavyweight champion Tyson). Since her exit from what was the pinnacle of reality television in Hague’s native Britain — her season remains the best-performing of all 12 installments of Love Island U.K., with over six million tuning in at its peak — she’s built a social media empire. Through controversy, a shock split, motherhood and an award-winning TV show, Hague has remained the envy of young women everywhere. THR was invited to the set for an exclusive look and sit-down with Hague on her doc’s second season, before the first three episodes drop Oct. 18.
“Oversharing is my middle name,” Hague says from her dressing room chair, make-up still perfect after hours of filming. “I was plummeted into the public eye at 19, a teenager, and now I’m 26 with a child, and I feel like my audience has grown up with me.”
She shares two-year-old Bambi with Fury, discovering a whole new audience on YouTube and Instagram (Hague boasts an eye-watering 10.5 million followers on these two platforms alone, more than any other Love Island contestant ever), who can’t get enough of her keeping-it-real-but-still-effortlessly-glamorous-mom content. “I have to give credit where credit is due,” says Hague about her Love Island stint. “The show helped so much to push me and my platform. I really love creating content — I love this job, I love what I do — [but]… I really didn’t expect to actually meet anybody. I just thought it’d be a bit of fun in the sun,” she says, “and I’m so grateful to the show because it gave me the life I have now and I met Tommy because of it.”
Which brings us to what the British press described as the biggest celebrity break-up since Charles and Diana. In August last year, women gasped in unison nationwide as Hague announced her split from Fury after five years together — and one engagement — via a statement on Instagram. The first season of Behind It All documented the fallout, offering up a candid picture of Fury’s relationship with alcohol and Hague’s single-mother struggles while he traveled abroad for big-time boxing bouts.
To get Hague in front of the camera after such public heartache was not an easy feat. “Anything I commit to I want to give it 110 percent, and I’m very particular about how things look,” she explains. “When I make my own content, I’m in complete control — handing over that control to Demi and Amazon was a huge, vulnerable thing for me to do.” But the social media star also immediately understood the name of the game. “You can’t go on a show like Love Island and then suddenly want to pull your relationship back from the public eye,” she says about her romance with Fury. “I knew what I was signing up for, and I never found it a challenge. Yeah, there’s some days where I wish I could deal with it in private, but that’s not the world that I’m in.”
Doyle’s original plan was to document Hague and Fury’s wedding build-up. After their split, she was convinced Hague could hold up the show by herself. “It wasn’t easy to get her to do it alone,” says Doyle, creative director of production outfit Navybee (within the Workerbee Group, part of Banijay U.K.) “I know that Amazon were really keen to get her, because she did have that kind of raw, intimate side that we could really capture — her YouTube is great and her socials are great, but there was always something else that people want to see behind that,” she explains to THR.
Averaging over one million views on each of her vlogs, Hague’s content represents something that hoards of young people have deemed aspirational. Slicked-back hair and glowy skin at the wheel of an expensive car, a carousel of sun-kissed vacation selfies or an autumnal hot chocolate shared with Bambi: her aesthetic is clean, chic and just the right amount of relatability.
“I still don’t think she understands how big she is and what an impact she has,” says Doyle about Hague’s unprecedented success. “Even now, [making] series two, she’s like: ‘Why do you want to film that?’ And it’s because people are interested in that. People want to know what Molly-Mae’s McDonald’s order is. [I say], ‘People want to know that side of your life.’” Doyle was right. Behind It All scored the highest opening day rating for a show on Prime Video in the U.K. upon its January release.
Recalls Hague: “I loved that the cameras just followed what was naturally going on. Nothing felt staged, nothing felt like it was forced.” Evidently, this authenticity translated just as they’d hoped beyond Amazon ratings: on Sept. 10, Hague and Doyle became National Television Award winners for Molly-Mae: Behind It All. Its star was applauded for letting her guard down — through tumultuous relationships, the growing pains of launching her own clothing company and even a frightful horseback-riding fall, she remained committed to laying bare the inner workings of Molly-Mae.
In season two, Hague and the team have found more even ground. “It feels like a lot more relaxed,” says the Brit. “Life is a bit calmer now, which is nice for me. It’s nice for Bambi and it’s nice for Tommy,” she adds (the couple reconciled earlier this year). “What you’ll see will be motherhood, the real ups and downs. We do a bit about potty training and the fun of that, and [also cover] me and my confidence and rebuilding myself since last year — the hurdles that happened with my relationship — finding myself again, how to fill my own cup while working and juggling Bambi.”
Throughout our interview, Hague’s team are setting up for their next shot. Doyle asks her a couple of questions to get the star chatting to the camera: “What are we doing today, Molly?” She’s needed back on the LookFantastic set soon. There’s no denying how at-home she appears, surrounded by fuss and pomp. But Hague’s not so sure she agrees. “We talk about imposter syndrome a lot. I think I have it every day,” she confesses. “It’s really hard to accept sometimes that you’ve gone from being a person to suddenly being on shoots with teams that want you to be happy. I try not to think about it too much. Why me? Am I worthy? Should it be me?” questions Hague. “We talk about that a lot [in season two].”
THR has to ask, then, if she were to hazard a guess: why does Molly-Mae think people love Molly-Mae? It turns out, it’s the not-so-glam outtakes that she thinks audiences are interested in. “People are nosy,” she says. “On Instagram, the picture looks perfect. On YouTube [or in Behind It All], you can see I was actually having a meltdown that day or my toddler’s had a tantrum, and I’m not actually finding it that easy. I think people really resonate when you tell the story behind the glossy highlight reel.”
Her Instagram and YouTube capture perfectly this stark contrast: all of the glamor-laced photoshoots and red carpet moments are counterbalanced by run-of-the-mill moments at home (Hague is a self-professed homebody, and movie-lover too — her favorite pastime is watching horror films).
Putting your life up online — and on one of the biggest streaming platforms in the world — is an occupation that requires an almighty thick skin. Hague is well-aware. In 2021, the influencer was widely criticized for an appearance on Steven Bartlett’s The Diary Of A CEO podcast where she told the host about her business-savvy brain: “We all have the same 24 hours in a day.”
The comments were swiftly dubbed “tone-deaf” and born out of Hague’s privilege, but she’s first to hear the haters out. “It’s necessary to put my hands up and say, ‘Guys, I definitely could have said that better,’” says Hague about catching flak. “It doesn’t happen all the time because I’m very, very careful — I try to be as uncontroversial as possible and keep it light-hearted.” When she does feel the need to respond to negative comments, Hague doesn’t take the bait. She has a handy habit to keep her sanity in check: “If I’ve seen something and I really want to respond, I’ll open my notes app and I just type down what I want to say, and then I turn my phone off. You don’t press send, you don’t press post, but you’ve gotten it out, and you’ve said what you needed to say.”
As Hague looks to season two of Molly-Mae: Behind It All — which, like the first, is releasing in two parts — she confesses to no longer dwelling so much on the hate and hysteria. The businesswoman will continue to fortify her legacy as the U.K.’s shrewdest influencer through brand deals and TV acclaim, but her hunger for success is no longer driven by self-motivation. It’s driven by Bambi. “I want to create an incredible life for her,” says Hague.
“When I came off [Love Island], I didn’t think I was gonna have this forever… Now we’re six years down the line and I’m still taking every opportunity that comes, if it feels right. And a lot of it is for Bambi. I don’t know when I’ll stop working but [I will continue] so that when she’s older, she can have an amazing life.” She’s called back to set. “There’s a higher purpose now, not just me.”
Series two of Molly-Mae: Behind It All (episodes 1-3) launches exclusively on Prime Video on Oct. 18. Episodes 4-6 will follow in early 2026.
