Mae Muller does not regret saying she "hates" the UK.
The 25-year-old singer is set to represent the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday (13.05.23) with her entry 'I Wrote A Song' but during the COVID-19 pandemic before she found fame, had expressed disdain for her home country in a series of tweets and claimed she "did not feel sorry" for then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson when he was struck down by the virus.
Asked if she regrets what she said, she told The Sunday Times: "No, because that’s how I felt. “I do, though, regret people taking them out of context. Me saying, ‘I hate this country’ is not ideal as I am representing this country.
"But I love where I’m from. It’s a privilege to be born here and that’s why I felt strongly. We deserve the best and at that time this amazing country wasn’t getting the best. We were being let down."
The 'I Just Came To Dance' hitmaker then insisted that the BBC didn't make her "scrub [her] personality over the tweets and instead claimed that any Brits who may have had a problem with her words are irrelevant because they are unable to vote for her in the annual contest, as she relies on support from other countries to claim victory.
She added: "They didn’t make me scrub my personality. It made me think how lucky I am that I was born in a place where I can give my opinion. A lot of people who did have a problem with what I said were from the UK,” she says. “They said, ‘You’ve lost my vote.’ Well, you can’t vote for me anyway. A lot of young women follow me and it’s important that they see they can have a voice."
