
Ariadna Gutierrez a.k.a Miss Colombia is opening up in a new interview about what happened after she had to turn over her Miss Universe crown following host Steve Harvey’s admission that he announced the wrong winner.
“I went up to my parents’ room and, obviously, I was very sad, I was in bad shape, I was crying. I cried a ton that night,” the 22-year-old said in an interview with Univision. Her name was on the card Harvey read from, but she was listed as the first runner-up, not the winner, who was actually Pia Wurtzbach of the Philippines.
Gutierrez criticized the show’s handling of the error. “In four minutes, they destroy your dreams,” she said. “They throw it in a bag, they throw it in the trash. They could have done it another way. I feel like it doesn’t matter to them the feelings of a girl who has worked her whole life for a dream.”
On his morning show Monday, Steve Harvey said he had reached out to Gutierrez to talk about what happened and personally apologize but that she had not responded to his request.
Read next: Steve Harvey Says Miss Colombia Won’t Talk to Him
[ABC]
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington
- Meet the 2025 Women of the Year
- For America’s Aging Workforce , ‘Retirement Is a Distant Dream’
- Why Do More Young Adults Have Cancer?
- Colman Domingo Leads With Radical Love
- How to Get Better at Doing Things Alone
- Cecily Strong on Goober the Clown
- Column: The Rise of America’s Broligarchy
Write to Nolan Feeney at nolan.feeney@time.com