Love Island to Continue Excluding Gay Contestants Due to ‘Logistical Difficulty’

Love Island will continue to exclude gay contestants, despite rumors that the franchise’s original British version, helmed by network ITV, would accept any contestant “looking for love.”

“Our only stipulation for applicants on Love Island is that they are over 18, single, and looking for love,” a source told the Daily Star in April.

But ITV commissioner Amanda Stavri shut down the possibility in a Wednesday interview with Radio Times.

“There’s been quite a few rumors circulating about featuring gay Islanders, so it’s worth touching on that really,” Stavri said, adding, “The line-up will be announced within time and it goes without saying that we want to encourage greater inclusivity and diversity.”

“In terms of gay Islanders, I think the main challenge is regarding the format of Love Island,” Stavri continued. “There’s a sort of logistical difficulty, because although Islanders don’t have to be 100 percent straight, the format must sort of give [the] Islanders an equal choice when coupling up.”

The show’s executive producer, Richard Cowles, made a similar claim regarding same-sex couples to the BBC in April, saying that while it was “not impossible” to include greater sexual diversity, “there is a logistical element which makes it difficult.”

In 2016, the show briefly featured same-sex couple Katie Salmon and the late Sophie Gradon, yet Gradon later admitted that the fling was “fake” and only a means to get ahead in the reality show.

“Katie was in on it,” she said. “She knew that I wanted to see Tom [Powell] at the end and that he was my boyfriend.”

In 2018, Gradon took her own life at just 32-years-old, becoming the first of three people linked to the series to die by suicide in less than two years.

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