'Marry Harry' Contestant Explains Being Tricked

On Tuesday night, I Wanna Marry Harry premiered on Fox and after a masquerade ball — Which really was not much of a ball seeing as only "Harry" and the contestants attended. Where were "William" and "Kate?" — impostor Matthew Hicks made his first elimination. Leah Thom, a 24-year-old from Fort Worth, Texas, was sent packing to go home and figure out that this was all a fraud. Leah spoke with People magazine about being eliminated first from I Wanna Marry Harry and she actually makes it sound rational to believe that Hicks was really Prince Harry.

Leah told People that a dating show was not something she ever considered until right before she auditioned.

I just got a text message one day asking if I wanted to audition and one of my best guy friends said I was really awesome and I had to do it. I almost chickened out on the day of the audition but he made me go and it just kind of worked out that they liked me.

Not only was Leah not interested in reality TV, she's not really interested in pop culture at all which explains how it is possible that she wouldn't know I Wanna Marry Harry was a scam. She said,

I don't really follow pop culture – as was made very apparent by the first episode. And my Internet is limited to watching TV shows so I honestly had no idea what he really looked like or if he would do something like this or anything like that so it was really up in the air.

If you're wondering why Leah wouldn't just Google "Prince Harry reality show" upon leaving the audition, that's because the contestants weren't told exactly what type of dating show they were signing up for. According to Hicks himself, it wasn't until he met the women that "Subtle hints were dropped here and there and they were left to come to their own conclusions."

It still seems like a stretch that someone could really think Prince Harry was on a dating show, but Leah makes it seem at least sort of reasonable. She did add that she wasn't surprised when she found out the truth. "It wasn't that shocking that he was a fake because, of course this was too good to be true, but I wasn't really there for too long so it didn't affect me as much as it would the other girls." Well, we don't know if the other women are in the same boat as Leah and really thought it could be the real Harry, but if they did, they have some not-so-great news in their futures.

Image: Fox