DETROIT — If Taylor Hale's tale is going to be told, she wants to make sure she's the one telling it.

The Detroit native and former Miss Michigan USA — who was crowned the first Black female champion of the CBS reality show "Big Brother" in 2022 — opens up about the abuse she suffered while competing in the Miss USA pageant in "Crown of Deceit: Inside the Miss Universe Scandal." The three-part docuseries premieres at 8 p.m. ET Thursday on TLC and HBO Max.

The series focuses on the topsy-turvy world of the Miss Universe competition, of which Miss USA is a feeder pageant.

After Hale competed in Miss USA in 2021, she says she was the subject of unwanted sexual advances from Max Sebrechts, who was the vice president of Miss USA. At the time, Sebrechts was married to Crystle Stewart, the then-head of the Miss USA organization. In the series, Hale speaks at length about the incident and how it unfolded.

"It took me a little bit to decide if I wanted to participate," says Hale, 31. "I've talked about what happened before, and there's a real fear on my end of letting this define me."

She ultimately came around, since she knew her story was going to be a part of the series, and she didn't want anyone else telling it but her.

"I'm not comfortable with that," says Hale, on a Zoom call last week from her Los Angeles-area home. "I think it would be a real disservice to let fear, and maybe a little bit of shame, stop me from speaking truth to power. And something I really realized this time around is that I shouldn't be carrying any shame. Max should be carrying the shame."

What happened

The incident occurred in November 2021, the day after the Miss USA competition — Hale was crowned Miss Congeniality at the pageant — when Hale says Sebrechts offered to help her carry parts of her costume to her room.

Inside her hotel suite, Hale says Sebrechts caressed her hair, pushed his body against hers and kissed her on the side of her mouth. Hale was then able to get him to leave her room.

Hale says she felt she was not the first contestant Sebrechts had sexually harassed; his moves were too studied, too deliberate. "He was just so confident with how he moved," she says, adding she had a hard time believing others in the organization didn't know about his behavior.

Sebrechts has denied the allegations, but he was quietly removed from his position with Miss USA in early 2022. Hale spoke out against him in October 2022, following the end of her Miss Michigan reign and her "Big Brother" win.

Hale says the "Crown of Deceit" producers allowed her to recount her tale in an honest, meaningful way and not smile her way through it, which is her nature, she says.

"That gave me the space, mentally, to actually process it differently," says Hale. "I've always known something messed up happened. I've always known that something really selfish and manipulative happened. But saying every single word with weight and gravitas, it made me kind of reframe how I've seen myself in it. I've never felt like I was a victim in the story, but this time, I just felt the heaviness of what happened, instead of feeling a little bit flippant about it. And I think, five years removed, finally embracing it that way, it's had me look at the experience differently."

Hale says after she spoke out, she felt like she was left in the dark by reps from the organization, who made her feel heard and then didn't keep her involved as the process moved along. But she's happy with the outcome.

"At the end of the day, Max was removed from the organization, and that is a good thing," Hale says. She says she wants Sebrechts "to be scared whenever my name is in the press, because I shouldn't have to carry any negative emotions about anything that I did when I was a titleholder. It should be him."

Belief in the institution

Hale came to pageants late in life; it wasn't until she was on winter break as a junior in college that she caught Miss Universe on TV and was so impressed that she decided she should give the pageant world a try.

"I just remember I was totally enamored by all the women, and I was like, 'I think I could do that,'" she says.

Within a month, she had signed up to compete in Miss Teen USA, and she later competed for Miss Michigan, which she won on her second try.

During her Miss Michigan reign, Hale says she learned how easy it was to use her presence to brighten someone else's day, and how that helped take her out of her own shell.

"I am so introverted. I could stay under my covers for 30 days and 30 nights, uninterrupted, and be thriving," says Hale. "But when I was a title holder, and you walk in somewhere with this glittery sash and crown, see how excited little kids — boys and girls — would get, and you'd see how enamored adults were by this idea or concept of what you are. It was so low-lift to go to somebody and say, 'hey, you want to take a selfie?' You can literally see somebody walk away practically skipping just because you said 'hi' to them. That tiny little extra effort — even when you don't want to do it, it doesn't take much — could totally change somebody's entire day."

It's something she still carries with her, now that she's recognizable to TV viewers everywhere. (In addition to winning "Big Brother," she also hosts a "Big Brother" recap show on CBS, she's competed on "The Amazing Race" and she was Playboy's Miss March 2026. She'll also be on the next season of Peacock's "The Traitors" in 2027.)

"Now I have this invisible crown and sash on all the time. But I've learned to take it not as a burden, but as a privilege," Hale says.

Despite the scandals associated with Miss Universe — and "Crown of Deceit" details a lot of them — Hale still believes in the pageant world.

She says she'd love to take over Miss USA and run it herself; short of that, she'd be interested in hosting the competition or producing a behind-the-scenes docuseries on the pageant, à la Netflix's "America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders" series.

She says she hopes "Crown of Deceit" isn't seen as a takedown of pageants, but rather something that advocates for change at the top of the organizations that run the competitions.

"I don't want this to turn into a cry for pageants to go away forever," she says. "I want this to be a call for better people, better investment, better production for everybody who wants to be involved in this. I think the more we look at any organization and say, 'maybe we should keep self-interested billionaires and business owners out of this, and really think about how can we make this equitable and fair for everybody,' that's where I think we'll see the real change that we need.

"I know what it's like to chase a dream. I know what it's like to step into an organization and feel like, 'Am I seen? Am I heard? Am I valued?' I think the worst thing that we can do is look down on the women and girls who compete in (Miss USA) and think, oh well, it's just a beauty pageant. Those shouldn't exist anymore," she says. "Maybe I'm just an institutionalist at my core, but I do believe that you have to have the right people and the right procedures in place to protect all these people. I just care about the girls."

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