HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Carrie Prejean says a steamy sex tape she made for an ex-boyfriend when she was 17 was “the biggest mistake” of her life.
“You can call it whatever you want to call it. If you want to call it a sex tape, that’s fine,” Prejean told Meredith Vieira on Tuesday’s Today Show. “I was a teenager. I cared about him. I trusted him.”
“Did I think it would come back now and haunt me? No. But I think that a lot of young people can learn from this,” she continued. “Nothing is private anymore. Nothing is private.”
The X-rated video surfaced during a recent negotiating session with Miss California pageant officials over a lawsuit Prejean filed against the organization for stripping her of her crown earlier this year. She quickly settled the suit when an attorney for the pageant whipped out the racy tape.
“It was me by myself. There was no one else with me. I was not having sex,” the controversial beauty queen told Vieira.
Prejean, who was stripped of her crown in June, had accused the organization of religious discrimination and emotional distress after she gave an answer opposing gay marriage during April’s Miss USA pageant. She appeared on Today to promote her new book, Still Standing: The Untold Story of My Fight Against Gossip, Hate and Political Attacks.
“The biggest thing and the reason I wrote this book is Americans believe their beliefs are under attack, and this is proof,” she said. “All I know is there is a campaign against me trying to silence me. They tried to embarrass me. They tried to humiliate me. They tried to attack me. And I’m still standing.”
In her book Prejean writes that women should avoid being treated as sex objects, a statement viewed by many as hypocritical in light of her past racy photos and sex tape.
“I’m a model. I was in a beauty pageant. If people want to call me a hypocrite, that’s their prerogative,” said Prejean. “I’ve learned from my mistakes. No one is perfect.”
