
Former Love Island star Priya Gopaldas has criticised the show’s lack of diversity and ‘token representation’ following the announcement of the new cast for the 2023 winter series.
Priya, a medical student who appeared in the 2021 series and was paired with Brett Stanilad, expressed her concerns about representation on the reality dating show on Instagram.
Taking to Instagram, the 25-year-old captioned a photo of the show’s newest cast members, ‘Love Island, where is the South Asian representation?’
‘P.S. No, dropping someone in a week before the final is tokenism, it doesn’t count,’ she added – referring to her own time on the show, where she only lasted a week in the villa and was dropped in as a bombshell towards the end.
In another story, Priya wrote: ‘It’s impossible to represent every ethnicity.’
Sharing Census 2021 data, she added: ‘Asians make up the 2nd highest proportion of the UK population so should be represented appropriately.’


Priya’s remarks resemble those of Sharron Gaffka, who stated last year that she believed she was being’scapegoated’ in order to check a diversity box.
The 25-year-old reality personality appeared on the hit dating show in 2021, but she and other islanders, including Shannon Singh, Priya, and AJ Bunker, allege they were not given ‘an equal chance’ because to their race.
‘I feel that Asian women were used as a token or a tick box in this series,’ she remarked on the Secure the Insecure podcast.
‘I felt like I was scapegoated for a tick box 95 percent of the time I was in the villa.’
‘It was so great to have me and another Asian girl, Shannon, there for the first couple of days but she was thrown out within 24 hours and then AJ, I don’t know how long AJ was in there but Priya wasn’t in there for very long either,’ she continued.
‘I don’t feel like any of us were given an equal chance at anything. It’s all well and good having a diverse line-up but if there isn’t diversity in what people find attractive then you’ve completely missed the mark and kind of wasted everyone’s time.’
Love Island returns on Monday, January 16 at 9pm on ITV2.