‘Try again and keep going’: Iris Mittenaere’s answers at the Miss Universe pageant

Miss France Iris Mittenaere fielded two tough questions on her way to the Miss Universe crown. The first she answered as part of the top six.

"Given today's worldwide refugee crisis, do countries have an obligation to accept refugees or do they have the right to close their borders?" host Steve Harvey asked her.

Mittenaere replied: "So the country should have the right to open or close their borders. Throughout the world, people can choose to have their borders open or closed. In Europe we have open borders. In France we have the most globalization that we can, we want to have the biggest exchange of people that we can. Maybe someday that will change, but now we have open borders. Having open borders allows us to travel more to the world and to find out more about what's out there in the world."

When she made it to the top three, Harvey asked her the same question as the other two finalists: "Name something over the course of your life that you failed at and tell us what you learned from that experience."

She said, "I failed several times in my life. So I thought I failed the first time I went out on a casting because my name wasn't on the list. And the very next day, I found out that I was in a very new [book]. So I think that when you fail you have to elevated and you have to try again and keep going. Tonight, if I'm not one of the winners, I would still have had the great honor of being one of the three finalists. So I think that I have failed before, but to me this is a great opportunity."

Mittenaere, 23, is the second Miss Universe from France. She is currently pursuing a degree in dental surgery, is fond of extreme sports and traveling, and loves to cook French dishes. — BM, GMA News