Dragons’ Den star accuses BBC show of ‘messing with the narrative’-Robert Oliver-Entertainment – Metro

A Dragons’ Den star isn’t happy with how her pitch was edited on the show (Picture: BBC)

A woman who appeared on Dragons’ Den has accused producers of the BBC series of ‘messing with the narrative’.

Anna Brightman, 30, who appeared on the show with her brother William to pitch a range of beauty products, has questioned how her segment ended up when it went out on TV.

She and William made their Dragons’ Den debut in 2018 when they asked for a £50,000 investment into their beauty brand UpCircle – in exchange, the dragons who accepted the pitch would own 2% of the company.

It wasn’t all plain sailing though, with dragon Peter Jones initially slamming their idea, but Anna and William turned things around to land their big investment.

While the pitch was successful, with dragons Touker Suleyman and Tej Lalvani both shaking hands and agreeing to invest, Anna’s memories of watching her performance again left a sour taste.

Anna and William asked for a £50,000 investment into their beauty range (Picture: BBC/Michael Mccarthymet)

‘What I found is, it is TV, so you can’t control the narrative that is spun. You are in there for hours, and that is a big fear for me,’ she recalled.

Anna told GB News: ‘When we filmed it the whole thing was such a blur. You’re filled with adrenaline, you come out of there and you go I don’t know what happened, what was said.’

She then added that, while business owners featured on the programme remember bits and pieces of the pitch, you’re left in the dark about what the producers are going to crop, edit, and change.

Anna’s UpCircle beauty range is now a booming business (Picture: BBC/Michael Mccarthymet)

‘They definitely do mess with the narrative. There were snippets that were put in answers to different questions. Huge portions of what happened are left out it seems very strange looking back on it.’

In a post on the company’s website, Anna and William said they were ‘standing for three hours’ in front of the dragons, and that they had no idea what the BBC were going to put out in the episode.

As of 2024, UpCircle have continued to endeavour to maintain a zero-waste beauty range, using upcycled materials to produce their products, which are also described as cruelty-free.

Anna has made sure that UpCircle is a zero-waste, cruelty-free business (Picture: Getty)

However, three years after their time on Dragons’ Den, Anna was featured in Forbes magazine’s 30 Under 30 list for 2021 – a group of 30 businesspeople under 30 who are notable in their particular field.

Unfortunately, there aren’t always happy endings for business owners who stand in front of the likes of Deborah Meaden, Duncan Bannatyne, and Sara Davies.

John Nicholls, who appeared on the series in 2017, believed he had a brilliant idea to help dog owners clean up after their pets while out on walks – a variation on the classic ‘pooper scooper’ idea.

Poor John claimed afterwards that the dragons were trying to intimidate him by fidgeting and even losing their temper with him, claiming the dragons were surprisingly ‘aggressive’.

Dragons’ Den is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

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