Meryl from The Traitors: "The abuse wasn’t anything I hadn't heard before"

Virgin Radio

8 Jan 2023, 13:28

The winner of the hit BBC show opens up on her social media experience.

Meryl Williams, one of the winners of BBC One's The Traitors, has spoken about the daily abuse she has received on social media since appearing on the show. 

Meryl, 25, has dwarfism and explained on Good Morning Britain last week, (Friday, January 6th) that she was able to cope with the negative comments because it was nothing she hadn't heard before.

It also helped that she enjoyed her experience on the show so much.

"People do stare, and that was before the show," said the former call centre operative. "After the show, I did receive some negative comments but it wasn’t anything I’d never heard before. Because I had such a good experience on the show, I just ignored anything else that was negative.

"I do experience it so I did know what it’d be like for people to stare and point, because that’s what I’ve experienced before. I thought, by doing this, I can at least change some people’s ideas."

Meryl went on to explain that her motivation for signing up for the series was to show that people with dwarfism were capable or doing most things asked of them.

"The whole reason why I wanted to go on the show was to raise awareness. A lot of people don’t think that I can do the same things as they can do," she continued.

"I thought, if I go on the show, if I do the exact same challenges as everyone else, we all had level playing fields. So, a lot of challenges, people were like, 'Did you get extra time?' No, we literally started the same. I just wanted to show I could do the exact same."

She added, "I just want to show people of all disabilities, including my condition, that they can do whatever they wanna do. Regardless, do not ever feed into negativity, because I think when you think about it, it eats you up inside."

It was recently reviewed that Meryl, who shared the £101,050 prize pot with fellow contestants Aaron and Hannah, has now left her role as a customer service agent with H&M in the hope of pursuing her dream of being a TV presenter.

She told The East Lothian Courier, "It has always been my dream from such a young age to have my own TV show – Minutes with Meryl.

“From the age of primary school, I would want to set up a studio and have someone being the weather presenter, someone being the news person and I would be the presenter."

Good luck Meryl!

'The Traitors' is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.