Sam Frost reveals brutal private fallout of her vaccination video

Sam Frost has opened up about the “disgusting” backlash that followed her controversial vaccine announcement – and why she doesn’t regret posting it.

Australian actress and reality star Sam Frost has spoken in detail for the first time about the fallout from her infamous vaccination announcement video last year.

The former Bachelorette and Home And Away actor, 32, courted controversy in October last year when she posted a tearful video to Instagram revealing she had not yet been vaccinated against Covid.

At the time she said she “could get into trouble” for revealing her stance on the vaccine, but pleaded for “compassion” and “empathy” for those who had made the same decision as her.

In a candid new interview with Stellar, Frost has opened up for the first time about the firestorm of controversy that video ignited – and said that she has no regrets about posting it, despite being “torn to f**king pieces” in the ensuing backlash.

As the backlash grew, Frost swiftly deleted the video. Picture: samfrost/Instagram

Frost later left her acting job at Home And Away. Picture: John Grainger

Frost said she “wasn’t in a good place” when she filmed the video, and wanted to reach out to others who shared her vaccine hesitancy. She revealed she had earlier suffered a “huge panic attack” during a consultation with her doctor about which Covid vaccine was best for her.

She told Stellar she thought it was “reasonable to be hesitant about a new vaccine,” and slammed the backlash that followed her video, including public rebuttals from fellow Bachelor alumni Abbie Chatfield and Matt Agnew.

“The bullying of unvaccinated people was disgusting,” she said. “Friends I’d had for years stopped talking to me. I never said I didn’t want to get it. I’m not an anti-vaxxer – are you kidding me? But I feel it’s quite unreasonable to assume that everyone’s going to think exactly the same way and that people are going to come to the exact same conclusion in the same time frame.”

Sam Frost on the cover of Stellar.

And Frost also claimed she received some “high-profile” support for her views amid the backlash.

“Thousands of people reached out to me – including quite a lot of high-profile people who went, ‘You’re so brave’ – and they felt the exact same way. So even though I copped it, it served its purpose of reminding people they weren’t alone and others were having the same struggles,” she said.

Sam Frost in the latest issue of Stellar. Picture: Steven Chee

Elsewhere in the Stellar interview, Frost opened up about her decision to quit her acting gig on Home And Away, insisting it was not driven by the backlash to her video nor by the show’s on-set vaccination requirement (Frost was fully vaccinated by the end of 2021).

But she did say that Covid had left the atmosphere on the soap “divided.”

“I loved my time on Home And Away,” she said. “But there was a divide in the workplace when it came to the vaccine and the mandate.

“It used to be my safe place. I had beautiful friends who I felt were like family. But Covid changed the dynamic a lot.”

Read the full interview with Sam Frost in this week’s issue of Stellar, available free with today’s Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Herald Sun

Originally published as Sam Frost reveals brutal private fallout of her vaccination video