Gable Tostee says he restrained his Tinder date Warriena Wright because he “didn’t know what else to do” and she was attacking him.

Mr Tostee has spoken publicly for the first time since he was cleared of killing the New Zealand tourist, who fell to her death from his high-rise apartment on the Gold Coast.

“I restrained her to stop her from attacking me … I didn’t know what else to do. I was just, ah, I wanted it to stop,” he has told 60 Minutes in a paid interview due to air on Sunday.

“This was a guest in my home. It wasn’t supposed to be this.”

The Nine network has aired snippets of the interview, in which a reporter asks Mr Tostee about an audio recording he made on the night Ms Wright died.

It captured her screaming “no” 33 times.

“Yeah, she was certainly trying to make a lot of noise,” Mr Tostee replies.

The reporter asks: “Can you understand why many people would think you’re a cold, heartless, cruel bastard?”

“When you put it that way, umm,” Mr Tostee replies, before the preview clip ends.

The 30-year-old carpet-layer was last month acquitted of killing the 26-year-old, who fell from the 14th floor balcony of his apartment in August 2014.

Mr Tostee recorded their encounter on his mobile phone, and the entire 139-minute audio recording was played to the jury during his six-day trial.

It included the confrontation between Mr Tostee and Ms Wright that led to her being locked out on the balcony and falling to her death while trying to climb down.

Nine’s decision to interview Mr Tostee and pay him a reported six-figure sum for the interview, has sparked anger among many on social media.

The Courier Mail has quoted an unnamed police source slamming Nine’s decision to interview Tostee as “disgusting” and as a “sad indictment” on the media.

“There’s a lot of anger among police about this,” said the source whom the paper reported was a “senior detective”.

“Of course we respect the court’s decision to find him not guilty, but for him to now do a paid interview, after everything this poor girl’s family has been through, is horrific.

“It might be legally okay but for Tostee to profit from Warriena’s death is morally repugnant,” he reportedly said.