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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Entertainment
Sandra Mallon

Rosanna Davison admits she wouldn't want her daughter Sophia to be a model

Former Miss World Rosanna Davison has admitted she wouldn’t like her daughter Sophia to be a model.

The stunning daughter of Chris De Burgh has made a career out of modelling, and even posed nude for Hugh Heffner’s Playboy Magazine in 2013.

But despite her illustrious career, Rosanna admitted she wouldn’t like her daughter Sophia to follow in her footsteps.

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In an open and honest interview about her life and career, she told Bobby Kerr on Newstalk’s ‘Life and Leadership’ podcast that she had been very lucky with the people she had worked with, but that “you can be exploited” in the world of modelling.

She said: “I was lucky that my Dad (Chris De Burgh) was able to give me advice on maybe the legal and media side of the business. His management was able to guide me in the right direction and put me in touch with others.”

Speaking about her photoshoot for Hugh Heffner’s Playboy Magazine in 2013, the mum-of-three told Bobby that she has no regrets.

When Bobby asked if she would do it again, she responds: “I don’t think anyone would want to see that again”.

“It was the right time…I’m delighted I did it”.

“I made sure I had control over the pictures chosen…every element of the shoot I had full control over”.

She added that the reaction was positive for the most part, but in Ireland, ten or eleven years ago, things were a little bit more shocking and a little bit more controversial.

Bobby: “So when your own daughter comes to you in 20 years time and says, “I’m going to be doing a playboy shoot in Germany, you’d say off you go?”

Rosanna replied: “You know what, I’d support her as much as my parents supported me. When I went to them and said I’d had this offer and I was considering it, my Dad said absolutely go for it, look at the women that have come before you…Pamela Anderson…all the supermodels, Naomi Campbell, Marilyn Monroe, it didn’t do them any harm.”

“My poor brothers actually fared the worst out of my playboy shoot…they were probably in their early 20s and they were tormented by their friends sending them pictures…they were scared to open their phones for a while.

“I sat down with my husband when I was going through the images…I was like now forget that I’m your wife and that you know me, just look at these images and tell me which ones you like and I’ll tell you which I like and we can see if we can choose the final set, and that was interesting because seeing it from a male perspective is different…he was really supportive as well”.

Rosanna has previously spoken about her fertility issues and the “traumatic” and “lonely” experience of miscarrying 14 times.

Eventually, she and her husband decided to go down the surrogacy route in Ukraine but it was not an easy decision.

“I was really grappling with the idea of another woman being pregnant with my child thousands of miles away,” she told Bobby.

“I felt horrified at the beginning of another woman having my pregnancy, so I just felt it would be easier to take the human relationship element out of it and follow the commercial surrogacy side.”

After Sophia was born, Nastia, who acted as her surrogate and Rosanna continued to message each other occasionally but they wondered if they would ever see each other again.

“When the war broke out, I contacted her and said, ‘Come to Ireland, we’ll get you somewhere to live, we’ll look after you. You helped us when we needed you, so it’s our turn to help you out.’”

Nastia and her family arrived in April and Rosanna set them up with an apartment and a local job.

“It’s sort of the story that kept on giving. I’m just so grateful that we were able to look after her and her family.”

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