PERU WHO?
Peru Two’s Michaella McCollum unrecognisable as she celebrates massive Netflix deal with shock transformation
DRUGS mule Michaella McCollum glammed up to celebrate a major global Netflix deal.
The ex-jailbird, 29, was unrecognisable from Peru Two arrest snaps - as she enjoyed a glam night out in a tight brown dress and showed off her long blonde locks.
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The mum-of-two posed in front of a Netflix logo cake and said: "F***ing celebration cake! Netflix worldwide weekend."
McCollum's docu-series High: Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule - which aired on the BBC last year - was released globally on Netflix at the weekend.
But the series is not available to watch for Irish users.
And the Dungannon, Co Tyrone native - who served more than two years in a hell-hole jail in Peru after she was found with €1.6million worth of cocaine in 2013 with Scottish accomplice Melissa Reid - celebrated as the show charted worldwide.
Michaella - who now has over 84,000 followers on Instagram after returning to Ireland back in August 2016 - was thrilled as the show nabbed the number six spot in South Africa, Canada, Slovenia, Switzerland and Czech Republic, seventh in Netherlands and eighth in Sweden, Austria and Romania.
And social media followers told the former trafficker that the series delivered a "super important message".
One said: "Loved the series! It has a super important message, you can learn from your mistakes and change.
"You are a strong woman overcoming all those challenges and facing the consequences of your mistakes! Enjoy a beautiful life now."
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One more wrote: "Only God could judge you! Loved your story! Amazing!"
Another said: "Turning adversity into advantage = respect. My child watched your Netflix series with me and it opened up a conversation that is difficult but necessary.
"Thank you for the opportunity given to learn from mistakes when young."
BIG MAC AND COKE
Michaella previously told how one of her biggest regrets was sniffing lines of coke and ketamine off a McDonald’s table at breakfast before her ill-fated drug trafficking trip.
She said she was high on drugs when she agreed to be a smuggler, but believed she only had to go on a trip from Ibiza to Barcelona.
Instead of a short hop to Barcelona, Michaella ended up on a long-haul flight to South America, where she would end up being caught at an airport trying to smuggle cocaine.
The pair hit the headlines around the world, having been dubbed the ‘Peru Two’, and Michaella said it saw them become a "tourist attraction".
She said: "I don’t know why it is that Irish people like to connect with their own, but I was touched and proud of my fellow countrymen and women.
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"Some visitor days I could be downstairs for hours with the nuns or other random Irish visitors — backpackers and the like.
"I had people from all over the world telling me they felt like they knew me, which I wasn’t happy with at all."
But Michaella - who became a mum when she gave birth to twin boys Rafael and Rio in 2018 - said working in the prison's beauty salon was "heaven" and helped her secure parole.
JOB MOVE
Speaking on the BBC doc, she said: "I learned the prison had their very own beauty salon, more like a few chairs and mirrors and a concrete room, but for me it was heaven.
"I got a job and I would do different hair treatments, colouring and cutting, blow-dries, waxing, nails, massage.
"I had no real qualifications, I was winging it but I was good at it. I had a lot of clients."
She penned a book on her time in prison, and said she had received plenty of TV offers that were willing to pay her "ridiculous" amounts of money since her release - but thought she wouldn't make much money from her book.
TV TEARS
Breaking down in tears on the radio in 2019, she told Matt Cooper on Today FM's The Last Word: "I did get a lot of offers, a lot of TV offers that were paying ridiculous amounts of money to do interviews or to do TV shows and I refused, you know I never did interviews.
"I did do an interview with RTE but they never paid me anything.
"I thought this is a good way to just say I’m sorry, I know I've done something wrong but when I was offered things after that I thought well this isn’t what I want to do.
"I don’t want to go on TV and talk about this and make money.
"I could have done that several times.
"And I think people can see that even though some people think I’m profiting from this.
"I mean realistically I’m not going to make a lot of money from the book.
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"I would have made more money by doing two TV interviews so I did the book because I wanted to tell my story.
"If I wanted to cash in on it I would have been making money a long time ago."
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