Tulisa Contostavlos: ‘My life fell apart’ after fake sheikh set up drugs bust
Tulisa Contostavlos has opened up about the moment she says her life “fell apart” after being “set up by a British newspaper” and charged with supplying drugs.
The N-Dubz star has been speaking about her experiences in 2013 on the reality show, I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!
The charges against the singer were later dismissed after prosecution witness “fake sheikh” journalist Mazher Mahmood was found to have tampered with evidence during her 2014 trial.
“2013 was the year I was set up by a British newspaper, for concern in the selling of class A drugs,” she told fellow campmate Oti Mabuse.
“The guy’s name was Mahmood and basically, I was approached by a big movie company and they sent me a tweet or a DM from their official account to audition me for a movie role… I’d dabbled in acting, so this opportunity for me was huge.”
Contostavlos, 36, said the role was offering £3.5m and she was flown out for meetings with producers in Las Vegas but told former Strictly Come Dancing star Mabuse “it was a lie”.
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She claimed the team behind the movie encouraged her to take on a real-life role of a “bad girl from London who was constantly up to naughtiness, rolling with gangs, up to all kinds of naughty stuff”.
Contostavlos said “they had me dangling on the end of a string”, claiming every time she met with the team they would tell her “we need some drugs”.
“After months and months, eventually they got a number and it was of someone that wasn’t even a drug dealer, it was an aspiring movie producer and I wanted to make a hook up as well for that person, but I didn’t know anyone that could do that,” she said.
“The long story short is they ended up ordering £800 worth of cocaine from the number that I had given them.
“Then before I knew it, I was being arrested in the concern of the selling of Class A drugs and I was facing four years in prison.”
Contostavlos revealed she lost “all my endorsements” over the incident and “my life fell apart”, she said.
“When it came to the trial, I’d had a conversation with one of their drivers, I was being recorded but I didn’t know, I was saying how anti-drugs I am, so they were very aware of my feelings towards drugs.”
Contostavlos said the driver initially gave a statement confirming she was anti-drugs, however she claimed that as the trial loomed the journalist forced him to change his statement.
In 2016, Mahmood was jailed for 15 months after being found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice relating to his actions in Tulisa Contostavlos’s court case.