ROCHELLE Humes has revealed how she received death threats in a race row over her Channel 4 Dispatches documentary.
The 32-year-old mum-of-three fronted The Black Maternity Scandal, which was an investigation into why there is a much higher mortality rate for black and mixed race women than white women when giving birth.
But when the show was released last March, the TV favourite was forced to defend taking on the role of host after being accused of “replacing” Candice Brathwaite.
Fans were outraged after Candice tweeted that she had lost out on a job to a “lighter-skinned black woman more than once in the last six months” – but didn’t name who.
Candice had campaigned about the higher maternal mortality in black women for years after she almost died giving birth to her daughter when she experienced septic shock.
At the time, Rochelle responded to the backlash in a statement, where she said: “I want to utilise my platform to add further reach and visibility to this ongoing issue, with the sole intention of creating broader awareness to affect change.”
Channel 4 added in a statement: “It is completely untrue that Rochelle Humes replaced Candice Brathwaite on this film.
“Rochelle was the only presenter attached to the project. Candice was approached to be interviewed but declined.”
But Rochelle has now revealed the impact the race row had on her.
Speaking to The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett podcast, she said: “There was a post that was posted on Instagram from another woman, who is an author and a presenter, that had said that she had been asked to front the same show.
“I’d woken up to and seen this post and was mortified, she was a darker-skinned black woman.
“The first thing I did was DM her, like, ‘This is my number, I don’t know what s**t has gone down here but this is my number, give me a call.’ To this day I’ve not heard from her.
“But then that sort of triggered this whole conversation of the fact that I’d taken a darker-skinned woman’s bread and the dial switched overnight. I was beside myself.
“Devastated. Whether you’re white or black, I’m not stealing any woman’s bread. That is not for me.”
She went on: “It sparked this debate around colourism, but it wasn’t the debate we were trying to spark.
“It sort of snowballed into this chat and colourism most definitely exists, I’m aware of that. I might be lighter than one woman but I’m definitely darker than some.
Rochelle added: “But I was like, ‘This is not about me.’ I didn’t want to make it about the fact that actually
“I was scared to take my kid to nursery that day because I got death threats.
“It’s not about me, it was about the bigger picture. The women [in the documentary] who trusted me.
“Marv did take my phone off me though. I love my phone at the weekend, but he was like, ‘That’s going off,’ and he literally texted everybody that works with me and was like, ‘If you need her I’m here, but no more phone.’
“In that time, I turned everything off, I turned off comments. I was like, ‘I’m not dealing with this, I’m just going to live my life.’
“I literally cried for 48 hours and was devastated. It was really weird, I made a roast dinner.”
Rochelle gave birth to her third child, first son Blake, in October 2020, with the star also mum to seven-year-old Alaia-Mai and five-year-old Valentina with husband Marvin Humes.
Filming was delayed due to her pregnancy as she found the topic “too heavy” to shoot while expecting.
