A new Channel 4 documentary is set to explore what happens to Love Island stars once their time in the villa is over.
Though some contestants go on to find fame and wealth through lucrative brand partnerships and social media sponsorships after their time on the hit ITV2 dating show, this is not always the case for Islanders.
Part of Channel 4’s Untold series, Life After Love Island looks at how participants’ expectations of gaining a successful new career as an influencer do not always match up with reality after returning home from Majorca, and investigates how this can take a toll on their mental health.
It will also explore how “a network of agents, brands, paparazzi and the public helps dictate who finds fame and fortune” once the Islanders are out of the villa, Channel 4 said.
Former Islanders including season 8 stars Coco Lodge and Ikenna Ekwonna, season 4’s Wes Nelson and winter Love Island winner Paige Turley are set to appear in the show, which will be presented by Will Njobvu.
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Lodge, who joined the most recent iteration of the show during its annual Casa Amor shake-up, admitted that she had hoped that she would accrue more Instagram followers during her time in the villa, and said that she was left disappointed when she realised her total was in the thousands rather than the millions.
“The perfect scenario would have been like a million followers or two million followers, but I came out to like 30k followers,” she said, adding: “I just didn’t really understand. I was like, why does everyone hate me?”
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The film shows her visiting a nightclub in Windsor with Njobvu and returning to her former job as a shot girl.
Lodge said that finding love on the show was a “bonus”, but most people enter the villa for the potential opportunities further down the line – although she also revealed that, when she was filming the Channel 4 documentary, she was still waiting for payment to come in from her post-Love Island work.
“You don’t go in there to find love. It’s a bonus if you do, but you go in there because you know what you can get after,” she said. “But at the moment I genuinely haven’t been paid in six weeks after leaving the show.”
Nelson, who coupled up with Megan Barton-Hanson in season 4 and went on to compete in ITV’s Dancing on Ice, said that he has come to realise that being an influencer is not for him.
“I’m terrible with social media… I tried [influencing] at the start,” he said. “I had a couple [of] deals and they were quite affluent and obviously you look at it and you think okay that’s a lot of money.
“So I tried it and then I was just falling miles behind on posts because I wasn’t posting on time. There’s a lot of big contracts that I just gave all the money back and just said I’m not doing them anymore.”
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“[Influencing] was actually making me quite depressed,” he added. “Like, real depressed. Really anxious all the time. The whole thing is very very fake. I don’t want to be a part of that.”
Love Island, a revival of the original ITV2 dating show Celebrity Love Island, first aired in 2015 and has gone on to be a major ratings hit for ITV.
259 Islanders have entered the villa so far, and Untold have found that half of them have returned to their old jobs in some form after leaving the show.
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