Miss USA Sarah Rose Summers said in a recent interview that the backlash over comments she made about Miss Vietnam H’Hen Nie and Miss Cambodia Rern Sinat was hard for her and “really broke” her.
Summers was recorded discussing the pair on camera at the Miss Universe pageant in Thailand in December 2018.
“She’s so cute and she pretends to know so much English and then you ask her a question after having a whole conversation with her and she (nods and smiles),” Summers said about Nie before laughing. “She’s adorable.”
About Sinat, she later added: “Miss Cambodia is here and doesn’t speak any English and not a single other person speaks her language. Can you imagine? Francesca said that would be so isolating and I said yes and just confusing all the time.”
Summers apologized for the comments and said that she spoke to both women about the remarks. Nie said Summers “didn’t mean anything” by her comments, while Miss Cambodia said that she valued her friendship with the other women competing for Miss Universe, while sharing a picture that Summers also shared on Instagram.
Desiree Summers, the mother of Miss USA, who is from Nebraska, said at the time that her daughter’s comments were taken out of context.
She told TMZ that her daughter “in no way meant any harm.”
“She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body,” she added. “[She] was just recreating how Miss Vietnam acts when she doesn’t understand what someone is saying. She wasn’t trying to mock her.”
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Looking back on what happened, Summers said in a new interview that it was a difficult experience.
“It was really hard for me. It really broke me because it was something that I meant in so purely, it was misconstrued and it really broke me down, whether it was messages on social media, hate mail… It showed a lot and I responded to it in the best way that I could, but it had definitely given me a more thick skin to understand that especially people who hide behind computers, it can be malicious,” Summers told Fox News.
“That can’t be your identity. Your identity has to be in who you know you are. And then on those hard, hard days, you have to be able to rely on your support system, whether that’s your family or your best friends. I was just really grateful that I had that in that time and I continue to as I go forward.”
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Summers said that she is getting married this year to Connor Combs, who she was engaged to soon after she made her public apology. She said that most of her bridal party were women she met while competing in pageants.
She also plans to launch a jewelry line “about female empowerment.”
The interview came as the next Miss USA will be named on May 2 in a program aired on Fox. Summers will be at the event to crown the new winner.
