The former nightclub hostess was thrust into the spotlight when her affair with Tiger Woods made national headlines in late 2009, but for years, she kept quiet about the entire experience. Then, one day, Matthew Hamachek, the co-director of HBO’s Tiger—a two-part documentary offering a revealing look at the rise, fall and epic comeback of the global icon—approached her about the project, which she ultimately agreed to take part in.
Why? To break her silence once and for all, Rachel explained on the Tuesday, Jan. 12 episode of Daily Pop.
“I have spent 10 years not speaking and just let people call me so many names, and I have really lived a discount version of my life,” the Celebrity Rehab alum told E!’s Carissa Culiner and Justin Sylvester. “And I think that so many people can really identify with that in their own lives, feeling like they cannot get out of the first act of their life, and they really wanna move on to the second act and you’ve been, like, shackled by that.”
“I just felt like, you know what? I’m gonna tell my story,” Rachel added. “I want to do it with somebody credible, and I want to do it with people I trust. I’m going to do it once.”
What Rachel does want is for people to pay attention to the role the media played in the scandal, especially when it came to shaping the narrative around not just her, but Tiger, too: “They took so much time really covering the fall and really making a big deal out of somebody’s pain and personal mistakes.”
“There’s things that happen and then there’s reality,” Rachel continued. “The perception of what happened becomes what people think of you. And then that story is what people go with and you can never get out of that black cloud. Forget the public perception, but it’s the perception of the people around you that just changes who you are.”
Added the Tiger star, “That’s happened to me and that’s been my life story. I’ve always been Rachel Uchitel comma Tiger Woods’ mistress, and I’ve never been able to get out of that. And that’s been the tragedy of my life, honestly.”
