After one week on the job, the stats show that Maya Jama has received 50% more airtime than her Love Island predecessor Laura Whitmore.
Maya, 28, is now receiving a lot of accolades for her role as the host of the reality dating show, and she says she is ‘overwhelmed’ by the response.
While the focus is generally on the Islanders looking for love, fans haven’t been able to take their eyes off Maya, and it appears that ITV has been thinking about this as well, given how much time she’s already been seen.
According to the Daily Mail, the presenter was featured for 19 minutes and 55 seconds after four episodes, whereas Laura, 37, had clocked 13 minutes and 26 seconds by the same episode previous season.
Fans had picked up on it earlier in the week, with many tweeting about it on social media.
‘Maya has been in the villa more times than Laura did the whole season already,’ one person wrote on Twitter.
‘Not Maya making more appearances in one episode than Laura did all last season lol,’ another added.
But ITV downplayed the gap in screen time, with a Love Island spokeswoman saying, ‘It’s disappointing that two female hosts are being unnecessarily compared in this way.’
‘Love Island has had three fantastic presenters and we celebrate them all.’
When Maya was announced as the new host in October, Laura wrote: ‘Yes girl!! So delighted for you! You’re gonna be fab x.’
Her husband, Iain Stirling, also narrates the show and said of Maya earlier this week: ‘Maya is absolutely fantastic… [she has] has done such a good job.’
‘Her slow-mo walks are something else. Great looks.’
However, Maya will still spend a lot of time on aircraft after revealing that she will be returning to London every weekend to present the spin-off show, Aftersun.
When declaring she was walking away from the show Laura, who presented the previous three seasons of Love Island, stated that there were certain components of the work she had ‘found very tough’, including ‘travelling back and forth to South Africa along with my new clashing projects’.
Not long before that, she described how ‘exhausting’ it had been at times to host the popular show and face scrutiny.
‘I had to also think about it for my own mental health side, because I love the show, but it comes with a lot of s**t,’ she said on Distraction Pieces Podcast with Scroobius Pip.
‘The host only appears three or four times; this has always been the case, yet it attracts the most attention. It’s a little exhausting and difficult,’ she continued.
Love Island continues tonight at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX.
