EXCLUSIVE – Inside my MTV dating show HELL: Transgender Catfish star lays bare ‘traumatizing’ experience on-set, revealing how she was ‘humiliated’ by producers, ended up in a physical fight, and had a screaming match with host Nev Schulman
- This week’s episode of MTV’s Catfish turned into a living nightmare for the show’s first drag queen transgender contestant, Sham Ibrahim
- The LGBTQ activist is ‘still very traumatized’ after being humiliated on-air
- Catfish had ‘no direction, no retakes, no hair and makeup team, nothing,’ Sham tells DailyMail.com exclusively
A transgender drag queen who took part in MTV dating show Catfish has opened up about her ‘traumatizing’ experience filming for the popular series – revealing how she was ‘humiliated’ by producers who helped to throw her into the center of a revenge plot 20 years in the making.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Sham Ibrahim laid bare horrific behind-the-scenes details about what it was really like to shoot for the show – days after her dramatic episode aired, revealing how she ended up in a screaming match with host Nev Schulman and got into a physical fight with someone on-set.
Sham’s Catfish nightmare began after she got in touch with the MTV show – which sees hosts Nev, 38, and Kamie Crawford, 30, helping people who are involved in online relationships with partners they have never met. The hosts play amateur sleuths who assist in determining whether the romances are authentic or fake.
For Sham, that romance was with a man named Phillip, whom she met on Snapchat. Phillip was – as far as Sham was concerned – attractive and well-spoken, and she was excited to see where the relationship might go in the future.
A transgender Catfish contestant has opened up about her hellish experience filming the popular MTV dating show
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Sham Ibrahim laid bare horrific behind-the-scenes details about filming the show – which is hosted by Nev Schulman and Kamie Crawford
Sham ended up in a mortifying on-air confrontation with a former acquaintance who had set up a catfishing Snapchat account to get revenge on her for sleeping with his former lover
After hearing about Phillip from Sham, a friend reached out to Catfish producers – hoping to prove that Philip was who he claimed to be. Sadly, he was not.
In fact, as it turned out, Phillip was a former acquaintance of Sham’s named Mike, who dreamed up the entire online romance as part of a vicious revenge plot to get back at Sham for having a tryst with his ex-lover 20 years ago.
Mike’s cruel prank was revealed during Sham’s episode of the show, which aired last week, with the Catfish cameras capturing the horrifying moment that Mike gleefully revealed himself to be ‘Phillip’.
The moment – which featured in the episode – showed a horrified Sham left open-mouthed in shock as Mike boasted about his con, telling her: ‘You always wanted a prince. Well here I am.
‘It’s me, your old friend Mike. I’m Phillip. I did the whole thing, of course I did.’
He continued: ‘I told you I was going to get you back girl. I told you. You stole my boyfriend in Mexico. I told you, I said, “Don’t take my boyfriend.” And you took him anyway. You are evil and you are a slut.
‘I told you I would get you back. You can’t just throw away a friend that has been with you for 20 years.’
Although the show captured the mortifying confrontation between Sham and Mike – she says the cameras stopped rolling before things truly took a turn for the nasty, admitting that she ended up throwing Mike into the pool outside the home where they met, a moment that did not make it into the final episode.
While Sham’s on-screen confrontation with her former friend was humiliating, she says things were worse behind-the-scenes, admitting she ended up in a physical altercation with him
Sham also confessed that she got into a screaming match with host Nev, 38 (seen center), because she was convinced that he knew she was being set up
Sham says she also ended up in a screaming match with host Nev, whom she assumed was purposefully trying to ‘humiliate’ her on camera by helping Mike pull off his revenge plot.
‘I got into a huge screaming match and argument with Nev,’ Sham told DailyMail.com. ‘Basically, I thought that he knew that Mike was a person I knew who was trying to humiliate me.’
However, Sham later learned that Nev was just as clueless as she was when it came to Mike’s true identity – adding: ‘Nev had no idea. I have done over a dozen reality shows. The difference between this one is that it is actually not at all scripted. It is 100 per cent reality.’
While the series gritty take on reality shows certainly makes for exciting viewing, Sham says it made her experience of filming the show a misery.
‘The show really had no direction and I was not allowed to film any repeats,’ she explained.
‘There was also no hair and makeup. This is also part of their effort to make it as real as possible.
‘I’m still very traumatized.’
‘At a time when transgender rights are being stripped away, Nev took the time to really understand me,’ Sham (seen in a selfie with Nev and Kamie) says
Sham was also given very little chance to prepare for her turn on camera, revealing that the cameras showed up at her home with no notice just one day after she had submitted the Snapchat messages from ‘Phillip’.
’25 cameras showed up at my place unannounced,’ she recalled. ‘This was the day after I submitted a copy of a Snapchat that I got from, who I believed to be, Phillip.’
Regardless, Sham is not crying over split milk and tells DailyMail.com that he managed to find a silver lining in the entire situation – the fact that Catfish and its producers were so accepting of her and the trans community.
‘You can clearly see that I am transgender from outer space. This has made dating in my life extremely difficult because many do not understand it,’ Sham tells DailyMail.com.
‘At a time when transgender rights are being stripped away, they all made a huge concerted effort to make me feel accepted. Nev took the time to really understand me. This meant so much to me.
‘If everyone made half the effort that the Catfish crew did, the understanding and acceptance of transgender people would change.’
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