Love Island Games contestants ‘walked off set’ after being told they “weren’t guaranteed airtime.”
Love Island Games, an international spin-off of the reality dating series, was announced earlier this year, with past stars challenged with both team and couple tasks, all while managing dating, eliminations, recoupling, and dramatic new arrivals.
Maya Jama is the host, while the UK’s narrator Iain Sterling has also been brought on board.
Former Islanders from the UK, US, Australia, Sweden, Germany, and France have all been grouped together at a villa in Fiji, with shooting taking place in recent months.
However, before the cameras began rolling, some cast members became so dissatisfied with the process that they chose to leave.
They have now talked openly about their experiences.
One of the main sticking points was a quarantine process, which saw contestants in a lockdown ‘for two to three weeks’.
One cast member described the process as ‘f***ing hell’ while another said they’d never experienced anything ‘more unorganised and chaotic in [their] life’.
After being quarantined for a few days, several participants said they were told they wouldn’t be able to begin filming for many weeks.
Others were warned during quarantine that they weren’t even promised a spot on the show.
Following this, several contestants decided to ditch the series and fly back home because it wasn’t worth ‘waiting around for weeks on weeks for a bit of airtime’, as reported by SoDramatic!
‘The rooms were nice. However, we just weren’t allowed to leave,’ one Islander said.
‘They’d take you out once a day for a walk, swim or gym, that’s it.
‘Some will still be in the hotels waiting and would have been there for more than three weeks, it’s pretty f***ed.’
While several Australian participants’ names were leaked to SoDramatic! before the official announcement, three were missing when the final list was announced.
One was a male candidate who was ‘begged’ by producers to participate, but when he arrived in Fiji and discovered he wasn’t a’starting contender’ and would have to quarantine for up to a month, he opted to leave.
‘He had already done a week of quarantine and didn’t want to sit in a hotel room for another 2-3 weeks locked away for a week or two of TV airtime when his brother is at home managing both of their workload for the business,’ a source said.
‘He’s not that desperate for TV.’
Meanwhile, one female participant was ‘dropped at the last minute’ after being approached by producers, while the other girl who is no longer mentioned as part of the cast is either a potential bombshell or has been eliminated entirely.
Eyal Booker, Georgia Steel, Jack Fowler, Megan Barton-Hanson, Curtis Pritchard, Scott Van-der-sluis, Mike Boateng, Liberty Poole, and Toby Aromolaran are Love Island UK cast members in this series.
Love Island Games premieres today on and will air on ITV at a later date.
