It’s time to whip out your sun cream and check your pecs: Love Island is back. So buckle up for lashings of banter and “grafting” as this year’s contestants try to seal the deal and conjure romance by the poolside. Here’s everything you need to know.
Is Laura Whitmore hosting?
The Co Wicklow presenter and actor has left Love Island, having first fronted the show in place of Caroline Flack three years ago. Whitmore announced in August that she is moving on to fresh pastures.
“There are certain elements of the show I’ve found very difficult that cannot be changed, some due to the format, including the flying back and forth to South Africa, along with my new conflicting projects. I wish it was still possible but know you’ll be in safe hands,” she wrote on Instagram.
Whitmore made her stage debut in September when she joined the West End cast of 2:22 A Ghost Story. She has also spoken about the abuse she has subject to on social media while presenting the reality show.
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Love Island is “just a bit exhausting sometimes, because some of the stuff is just mental,” she told the Distraction Pieces podcast. “As a host, this takes up not a huge amount of my time compared to my other work. It’s over eight weeks. The host only comes on three or four times. It’s always been the way, but it gets the most attention. It’s a bit exhausting and it’s tough.”
The 37-year-old is married to the comedian Iain Stirling (who provides Love Island’s wry narration). They have a baby daughter, Stevie Ré, born in March 2021.
Who is the new host?
Whitmore’s replacement is Maya Jama, a 28-year-old model turned TV presenter – she has copresented Peter Crouch: Save Our Summer and hosted Glow Up: Britain’s Next Make-Up Star, both on the BBC.
It’s January – how can Love Island be a thing at this time of year?
The show is flying south for winter for the first time since 2020. The new HQ is a villa on the Ludus Magnus estate in Franschhoek, part of the South African town’s “millionaire’s row”.
Have they changed the rules?
Love Island has been criticised for not doing enough to help contestants adjust to life after the show. Former Islanders Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis died by suicide, as did Caroline Flack.
Former Irish contestant Yewande Biala has spoken out about the racism she encountered when another contestant refused to pronounce her name properly. “I corrected her multiple times. I didn’t mind, because you are going to get it right. There was a moment just before a challenge. This was after [that] weeks in. She mispronounced my name. I corrected her again, and her reply was, ‘Yeah, whatever, you know what I mean.’ I remember one of the producers put her arms around me,” she said.
“Being black on TV means not raising your voice, not being too defensive, because you don’t want to create the narrative of being an angry black woman or being a bully. I am not a bully. It’s such a huge accusation and one that should be handled very seriously.”
Last year, the family of the Dublin contestant Dami Hope were forced to disable his social media after a stream of hateful comments were posted while he was on the show. This has prompted the producers to introduce new social-media rules in 2023, in which the accounts of all contestants will be frozen during their time in the villa.
“I think it’s not a bad thing at all,” says one of this year’s contestants, Lana Jenkins, a make-up artist. “I think it’s nice that you have time away from Instagram and also your friends and family don’t have the pressures of it.
“I think it’s a lot to deal with having to watch your friend or your daughter go on telly, as well as running an account. I’d just prefer that they just relax, watch it and just crack on, and then as soon as I’m out I’ll be back on Instagram, so it’ll be fine.”
Who are the other contestants?
There are no Irish contestants among the 12 to enter the villa. But the series does make history with the inclusion of Ron Hall, a 25-year-old financial adviser from Essex, who is the first partially sighted contestant on the show. This follows the appearance last year of Tasha Ghouri, the show’s first deaf entrant.
“On meeting me, you’d never know I am blind in one eye,” Hall says. “It was the result of a football injury when I was eight; I went in for a header and got kicked in the face. I’ve got two different-coloured eyes, one blue and one green.”
The cast also includes the semi-professional soccer player Tom Clare, the biomedical student and influencer Tanya Manhenga, and the farmer Will Young.
So no Irish contestants at all?
Love Island 2023 is an all-British affair so far, but Greg O’Shea, who won Love Island in 2019, has hinted that the producers may introduce an Irish Islander later in the season. They’re still “looking in the Irish pool”, he says.
Can Irish viewers vote on eliminations later in the series?
Love Island airs on an Irish channel, Virgin Media One, but, as it is produced by ITV primarily for a UK audience, no, we have no say in who stays or goes.
When’s it on?
Love Island begins with a bumper 95-minute episode on Monday at 9pm on Virgin Media One.
