What to Know
- The Bahamian restaurant owner who catered the Fyre Festival, has raised more than $160,000 since two documentaries about the fest came out
- Maryann Rolle said she was never paid by Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland, and had to pull $50,000 from her savings to cover expenses
- Rapper Ja Rule, who helped organize the event, apologized to Rolle and everyone else who didn't get paid in an Instagram post
It's been nearly two years since she was stiffed by Fyre Festival organizers, but a Bahamian caterer is finally getting paid for feeding hundreds of frustrated festivalgoers -- and then some.
Maryann Rolle, the restaurant owner featured in one of two competing documentaries about the failed 2017 festival released over the weekend, has raised more than $160,000 on a GoFundMe fundraiser she created a few days before the two films hit Netflix and Hulu.
In the Netflix documentary -- titled "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened" -- Rolle said she had to drain $50,000 from her personal savings account to pay her employees and bills after she was jilted by the festival and its architect, convicted New Jersey fraudster Billy McFarland.
"Personally, I don't like to talk about the Fyre Festival," the visibly upset businesswoman says in the documentary. "Just take it away and just let me start a new beginning."
She adds, "They really, really, really hurt me."
Rolle's fundraiser and her interview in the film caught the attention of New York City rapper Ja Rule, who was involved with planning the failed festival.
Ja Rule spent much of the weekend tweeting about the festival, claiming he "too was hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, led astray!!" by McFarland, but he took time to post Rolle's photo to Instagram.
"My heart goes out to this lovely lady... MaryAnne Rolle we’ve never met but I’m devastated that something that was meant to be amazing, turn out to be such a disaster and hurt so many ppl... SORRY to anyone who has been negatively effected by the festival," he wrote in the caption.
In a video posted to TMZ on Tuesday, Rolle said she thought Ja Rule was sorry, but said he should consider donating $100,000 to her fundraiser.
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"If he's sorry, he should be donating something to me," she said. "Sorry's more than a word, it's an action."
