Although I’ve spent more than a thousand hours watching, publishing a book about, reporting on, discussing, and reading Reddit threads about Love Island, it is impossible to imagine myself in the position its cast members have put themselves in. To write Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized Reality Behind Love Island), I did nearly a hundred interviews to personally interrogate the motivations of Islanders but can’t fathom wanting to be on the show. I can’t imagine submitting myself to 24-hour surveillance and public votes about whether people like me and slow-motion camera shots of my butt in a thong. I imagine this is the sentiment of most of the millions of people who watch Love Island, except of course the 100,000 or so who apply to be on the show annually.Article continues after advertisement
And yet, every season, I become deeply invested in the personal choices and outcomes of the Islanders. This happens because I, and the rest of the audience, see every granular decision that led to where the cast members end up, in ways that meet or even transcend what could be drafted as dialogue or stage direction. “If I write it in a script, you won’t believe it,” Love Island USA’s then-executive producer Simon Thomas told me last year. But when you see it on Love Island, he says, “it is cinema.” In Love Island USA’s case, that genre of cinema is romantic comedy.
