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She’s apparently the United Kingdom’s top influencer, but Molly-Mae Hague isn’t quite as influential for those of us across the pond. That could change on Friday, January 17, when Prime Video debuts its docuseries Molly-Mae: Behind It All.
With three episodes debuting on Friday and more coming this spring, Behind It All “will take you beyond the headlines of the U.K.’s #1 influencer to uncover the real Molly-Mae,” per Prime Video. “Following her journey after her publicized break-up, we get to see Molly as we’ve never seen her before.”
And you’ve seen her before if you’ve watched Love Island UK, on which she came in second place in the dating competition’s fifth season, alongside Tommy Fury, with whom she’s made plenty of headlines lately.
A little backstory: Hague was raised in a lower-middle-class family in Hertfordshire, England, one of two daughters of two police officers, according to The Times. Hague pursued singing, cello lessons, dancing, and beauty pageants in her youth and won the 2016 World Teen Supermodel UK crown.
But it was influencer life that appealed to Hague most — she had 8,000 Instagram followers by age 16, she told Cosmopolitan UK — and she moved to Manchester at age 18 to pursue that career. “I was blessed that I jumped on the bandwagon at the right time,” she told The Times in 2022. “When I started, it was a humongous thing, but there was still room to grow.”
(“Blessed” is a catchphrase of Hague, it seems. In that same interview, she called her social media following “blessed,” her relationship at the time “so blessed,” and her Love Island experience “very blessed.”)
Hague auditioned for Love Island in 2018 but wasn’t selected, but in 2019, the producers reached out to her. She connected with Fury in the Love Island villa and became a star, going from 160,000 Instagram followers to nearly 3 million during her time on the show.
That said, Hague got flak for participating in the show — some social media users called her “Money-Mae” or deemed her fake — but she also got devoted fans. “I can count on one hand the friends that I have,” she told The Times. “But then really, I have, like, six million of them, so it’s like a nice balance.”
Following Love Island, Hague made the most of her proverbial 15 minutes of fame, becoming creative director of the fast-fashion label PrettyLittleThing, launching a self-tanning line, landing a sponsorship deal with Starbucks, and penning the autobiography Becoming Molly-Mae. She was a millionaire by the time she was 23.
With that fame came scrutiny. Twice Hague has run afoul of the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority with her Instagram posts, including one in which the watchdog group determined an online giveaway was not administered fairly, as the BBC reported.
And a bigger controversy came in December 2021, when Hague, then 22, said in a podcast interview that success “depends [on] what lengths you want to go to get where you want to be in the future,” per The Standard. Critics called Hague tone-deaf, saying her comments ignored structural inequality around race, gender, disability, and other factors. On social media, one user said Hague “[had] really taken ‘girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep’ to a whole other level,” while another said her “lack of self-awareness is crazy,” per The Independent.
“Obviously, I meant absolutely no malice or anything ill-intended by that comment at all,” she told British Vogue in an interview published in November 2024. “Would I have worded it slightly differently now? One-hundred percent, as to not upset anybody. But you’re not always going to get it right, living your life in the public eye.”
Hague’s relationship with Fury has also been under the microscope since their Love Island days. The pair welcomed daughter Bambi in January 2023 and got engaged that July. But a little more than a year later, in August 2024, Hague announced the end of her relationship with the professional boxer.
“No one will ever really know what went down apart from Tommy and I, and that’s how we’d like to keep it, for Bambi’s sake,” Hague told British Vogue. But she also seemed to shift the blame on Fury, saying, “I do think that he will talk about things eventually. I do think that when he’s ready, like, maybe more will be said. But I think that’s for him to do on his terms.”
Now Behind It All captures a post-Fury Hague as she balances motherhood with her career in the lead-up to the launch of her fashion line, Maebe. “This year has been a transformative one for Molly, and we’re thrilled to offer Prime Video audiences exclusive, intimate access to her daily life and exciting new ventures through this series,” Hannah Blyth, Head of TV at Prime Video UK, says in a press release. “Molly is a true powerhouse and her authenticity, resilience, and strength will undoubtedly resonate with viewers as she opens up like never before.”
Molly-Mae: Behind It All, Series Premiere, Friday, January 17, Prime Video