In 2003 a woman called Miriam Rivera signed up to star on a new reality series.
There’s Something About Miriam was set in Spain and saw six men compete for a £10,000 reward over who could make the best impression on the 21-year-old Mexican model.
After competing in various physical challenges as well as going on dates with Miriam, in the final episode she made her pick.
But immediately after she shared that she was a transgender woman who had not yet undergone gender-affirming surgery.
The response from her potential suitors was swift.
Although her chosen pick Tom looked shocked by what he was being told, the rest of the group burst out laughing, with one declaring: ‘I told you. I told you all along. I knew!’
Off-camera, one contestant reportedly destroyed parts of the set in a fit of rage.
Despite the backlash the show received, including from the contestants who took the production company to court, Miriam was hailed as ‘Britain’s first transgender TV star’.
Her initial notoriety saw her cast on Big Brother Australia the following year, but she was rarely seen on screens again after that.
In 2019 she was found dead in an apparent suicide, which came after a battle with depression and drug addiction.
Her story is the subject of the new Channel 4 documentary, Miriam: Death of a Reality Star, which airs this week.
Who was Miriam Rivera and what reality TV shows was she on?
Miriam Rivera was born in 1981 in Mexico.
Assigned male at birth, she was named Hugo Cesar, but always felt different to her three brothers and preferred to play with dolls instead of playing baseball.
She showed signs of gender dysphoria from a young age and started socially transitioning and taking hormones when she was a pre-teen.
However, her father Fernando Mendoza refused to accept her, sharing in the documentary he always refused to call her anything other than the name she was given when born.
‘I never accepted the name Miriam. I always called him Hugo, Hugo, Hugo. He was a young male who had his little balls but who didn’t play his role as a man,’ he says.
After discovering a schoolgirl’s skirt, heels and wig under Miriam’s bed when she was 11, he turned to a priest for help.
‘No-one wanted to have a child who was gay, and I believed that there could be a medicine for it, a treatment,’ he recalls.
One day the priest came to the family home and started touching Miriam’s forehead and ‘screaming’, claiming a demon was ‘possessing’ her body.
‘We couldn’t stop it at the time- we were in shock,’ one of her brothers said of what unfolded.
‘I think that was the last time I saw him as a boy. That was the last step for Hugo and the first step for Miriam,’ he explains.
Three years later, aged 14 Miriam ran away from home and moved to Tijuana before arriving in New York, where she worked as a model.
Her first taste of fame came when being scouted for an all-trans girl band called Speed Angels and then caught the attention of a TV producer, who cast her in a new TV project, which would eventually become the reality show on which she made her name.
At the time that cameras started rolling in 2003, she was 21 years old.
Following the series hitting screens, Miriam appeared on Big Brother Australia in 2004, but opportunities dried up after that.
Before entering the Big Brother house, Miriam had told host Gretel Killeen about the dangerous reality of growing up as a transgender woman in Mexico.
‘You have to be really strong; I went through a lot. You have no idea what I went through, it’s not even funny. But I’m a strong woman!’ she said.
The initial airing of There’s Something about Miriam was delayed by a year after all six men who featured launched a joint lawsuit for conspiracy to commit sexual assault, defamation, breach of contract and personal injury, for the psychological and emotional damage.
Eventually the case was settled for an undisclosed sum, but each is believed to have received around £500,000 each.
What happened to Miriam Rivera?
Three years after There’s Something About Miriam aired, she suffered a shocking assault, being pushed out of a fourth-storey window of her New York apartment.
She later disappeared for six months, claiming she had been kidnapped at gunpoint.
Nikki Exotica, a close friend of Miriam’s at the time, once explained how horrific her injuries were.
‘She was in a whole body cast, half her head was shaved, she had brain surgery, she had haemorrhaging, her whole front of her forehand was cracked open so they had stitches, she had her arms in a sling, she had her legs in a sling – she was badly messed up and she was in a coma for, I think, five days before I found her,’ she said.
In the years after, Miriam spent most of her time in Europe and never again engaged in showbiz, modelling or music.
She was also understood to have taken up sex work to pay off her mounting hospital bills.
However, in 2019 tragedy struck when Miriam was found dead in her mother’s apartment, aged 38.
Her death was not revealed publicly until six months later.
Though authorities claimed it was a suicide, her close friends and family – including her husband Daniel Cuervo – believe she was murdered.
Some have said they believe she may have been killed after refusing to accept a sex work job.
Who was Miriam Rivera’s husband Daniel Cuervo?
Although not much is known about him, Miriam’s husband Daniel Cuervo has claimed that his wife was killed and did not take her own life.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Daniel recalled what unfolded the day she died five years ago.
‘On the morning of February 5, Miriam called me [in New York] from Mexico, telling me she was feeling sick and vomiting blood, so I told her to get to the hospital,’ he said.
‘She called me again before leaving the hospital at 12pm and that was the last time we spoke.’
Two hours later she was found dead.
When he learned of his wife’s death, Daniel asked about the possibility of flying her to New York but was told the body had already been cremated, which also left no chance for an autopsy to be performed which he labelled ‘very suspicious’.
He also claimed that an unknown male had called him when he was trying to arrange Miriam’s funeral and said: ‘Don’t come back to Mexico or we’ll kill you too.’
The new three-part documentary series about Miriam restores her as ‘the star of her own story – a trans trailblazer who remains an icon for many in the transgender community’.
As her youngest brother Ariel Mendoza shares that in the years after her reality show, Miriam ‘looked sad’ whenever it was mentioned.
‘Maybe she was ahead of her time, but I hope her story teaches tolerance.’
Miriam: Death of a Reality Star airs tonight at 9pm on Channel 4.
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