Teuila Blakely finally speaks out about that 'infamous' video with Konrad Hurrell

Teuila Blakely, 42, is done with the fall-out from the leaked sex tape she made with former Vodafone Warriors player Konrad Hurrell.

The footage remains online but this will never be the defining 17-seconds of her life.

"I take it, I deal with it, I move on. And I've had to deal with so much in my life. These things take, like, five minutes. But I'll take five minutes to honour them and cry. Yeah. 'Cos I've dealt with way worse s**t."

Blakely received a lot of hate following the leaked video, including someone telling her she would make a great head coach (LOLZ) and another who commented on YouTube "let's be honest, all Island girls are sluts". She even had people telling her to kill herself.

"This is not going to be the end of me. No f***ing stupid social media slut-shaming bulls**t is going to be the end of me."

"As a woman, at some point, you have to fall in love with who the f*** you are and how the f*** you are. In every single way."

Blakely had to deal with the fact that half of New Zealand and much of Samoa watched the ex Shortland Street star and the 22-year-old New Zealand Rugby League star "having a very nice time".

"That wasn't the first or the last video that Konrad or I made. When he started doing that, I was like - 'oh shit'. I had to ask myself in an instant, 'are you okay with that? Can you deal with that?'

"Part of being an empowered sexual woman, which we all have the right to be, is I can send a topless video or selfie to my man. I'm allowed to. And if he puts that online, I'm allowed to not be ashamed of that, because I did that. I'm allowed to make a f***ing video of me in my car. I was actually okay with the whole thing . . . with him making a video of it, I was even okay with him sending it to his mates. I was not okay with it going online to everyone for them to have their judgment about what I feel okay with in my life."

Human beings need validation and social media validates, says Blakely.

"To me, the more negative it is, the deeper the need. Give them points for creativity - some of them are as colourful as f*** - but at the end of it, is the need to be validated. If you get that from doing that to me, well you get that today, but you're going to need that from somebody else tomorrow and the next day and the next day."

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission.