Miss Colombia is likening her brief reign as Miss Universe to what it must feel like to be tossed away like yesterday’s garbage.
“In four minutes they destroy your dreams, they throw it in a bag, and they throw it in the trash,” Ariadna Gutierrez said Tuesday on Univision.
The 22-year-old beauty was all smiles after being named Miss Universe on Dec. 20 — but she was left devastated just minutes later after host Steve Harvey announced he had read the wrong winner’s name.
The crown was literally removed from her head on national television and given to its rightful owner, Miss Philippines Pia Wurtzbach — leaving Gutierrez furious with the way the situation was handled.
“They could have done it another way,” she continued in a translation provided by ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I feel like it doesn’t matter to them the feelings of a girl who has worked her whole life for a dream.”
The Colombian stunner remained composed as Harvey announced the correct winner and apologized for misreading the winner card, but the distraught contestant broke down immediately after the show.
“I went up to my parents’ room and obviously, I was very sad,” she said. “I was in bad shape. I was crying. I cried a ton that night.”
Gutierrez, among many others, has suggested she and Wurtzbach share the crown following the “humiliating” incident — but the pageant’s eventual winner has no plans of doing so.
“I think it would be a little difficult for two girls to share a crown,” Wurtzbach said on “GMA” on Tuesday.
Harvey, meanwhile, has continually expressed his regret since that fateful night, consistently claiming it was an innocent mistake and not some twisted publicity stunt.
“Why the hell would I do that?” he said on his radio show Monday. “Do you really think I wanted to be famous like this?”
The first-time host has accepted the brunt of the blame for the mishap, even though he contends the card’s text was different from what was on the teleprompter.
“Did I make a mistake? Yes, I did. Wholeheartedly,” the 58-yeard old comedian said. “At this point of the game, I’m not in the finger-pointing business and rolling other people under the bus.”
