By LOUISA CLEAVE
Followers of the Export Gold flatmates may have noticed a member missing in the latest television ad.
"Sharon," the young Maori woman, has disappeared in the new advert, which has the team acting out a fantasy sequence in the style of the science fiction movie The Matrix.
Veeshayne Armstrong, the actor who played Sharon, said she had given up the part because it conflicted with her Mormon beliefs and her abstinence from alcohol.
The 27-year-old said she had returned to the fold of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints last year.
The Mai FM radio host was also concerned that her promotion of alcohol was in conflict with the alcohol-free position she took with the station's young Maori audience.
"Whenever I'm out in public [with Mai] I always say I'm drug-free, smoke-free and alcohol-free and then [the kids] say, 'But you're the short chick on the Export Gold ad.'
"I thought: 'I'm really going to have to take a stand,' which was quite difficult because we get paid reasonably well for a minimal amount of work."
Armstrong said she had nothing against people who drink alcohol, but she had seen the effects of it on family and friends and had tried it only once in her life.
Radio host takes alcohol-free stand
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