Molly-Mae received widespread backlash for comments made about success.

Maura Higgins has defended her Love Island co-star Molly-Mae Hague after she attracted backlash for comments she made during a recent podcast appearance. On Steve Bartlett's The Diary of a CEO, Molly-Mae said: "You’re given one life and it’s down to you what you do with it. You can literally go in any direction. "When I’ve spoken in the past I’ve been slammed a little bit, with people saying, ‘It’s easy for you to say that, you’ve not grown up in poverty, you’ve not grown up with major money struggles. So for you to sit there and say we all have the same 24 hours in a day is not correct.' "But technically what I’m saying is correct – we do. "I understand we all have different backgrounds and we’re raised in different ways and have different financial situations, but if you want something enough you can achieve it. "It just depends to what lengths you want to go to get to where you want to be in the future. And I’ll go to any length. I’ve worked my absolute arse off to get where I am now.” Since then, many have called out Molly-Mae for failing to acknowledge the mechanisms of privilege and the very real barriers that exist for people from marginalised backgrounds. https://twitter.com/tsrbys/status/1478866675969794052?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1478866675969794052%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.her.ie%2Fceleb%2Fmolly-mae-hague-criticised-tone-deaf-comments-success-544847 Love Island alum Shaughna Phillips later took to Twitter to comment on the situation. She wrote: "Molly Mae is young, who's had a lot of success really quickly, and not a lot of 'life'. So I can understand why she holds those views. We all say things when we're younger and look back and think 'well that was stupid' lol. No shade I wanna live in her bubble." Maura Higgins then commented saying that she was "surprised" to see Shaughna's input. She wrote: "Surely you know as someone in this industry how lonely and scary it can be when the whole internet is slamming you. Your [sic] entitled to your opinion yes but I'm really surprised you commenting on this at all." Shaughna replied to Maura saying that she was tweeting in defence of Molly Mae. She wrote: "She's young and successful, it's not her fault she has those views. Like I said, no shade, just jel lol" Molly-Mae has yet to address the widespread backlash.