Love Island UK contestants reveal help needed for dealing with trolls, press.

Former Love Island UK stars fronted a government inquiry in London this week, giving evidence about their experiences on the show.

It follows tragedies surrounding Reality TV in which two former participants took their own lives. Another man involved in talk show The Jeremy Kyle Show also suicided.

Participants told the committee they were given psychiatric evaluations by ITV before they appeared on Love Island and saw doctors in the days and weeks after the series ended.

“The whole time on the show is fine, when you come off it’s fine, but because you are in the spotlight, no matter what you do, there will be a story about it,” Marcel Somerville said.

“The press will jump on to anything. If you have a public break-up, you think, this is the worst period ever and then you get trolls who add fire to it – that was the worst part of being on the show.

“They do a psych (evaluation) before you go on and when the show is finished you do another psych, and then again a week later. But it should be three or six months down the line because that’s when you’re dealing with it.”

The committee also asked if producers influence contestants’ behaviour or if the way the show is edited distorts reality.

Yewande Biala said the editing of the show was fair in general given the limitations of having an hour of air time to sum up a full day. “They can only show what you’ve said and what you’ve done,” she said. “I was shown the way I acted. It was exactly how it was, and I was happy with it.”

Somerville highlighted, though, that some scenes get edited to add more spice and emphasise storylines. “They will make big things out of people saying things to add humour,” he explained. But even though some editing slightly upset him, he said overall that “they definitely put me across in the best light.”

“It is going to affect you, the storyline you get, and whether they edit you as a hero or a villain. … I was a hero so I couldn’t really complain.”

Following the UK tragedies, all of which were associated with ITV, the broadcaster updated its Duty of Care on Love Island which you can read here.

In its statement, ITV said it “constantly strives for best practice in all our programmes”, pointing out that last year it asked former chief medical officer Dr Paul Litchfield to carry out an independent review of the processes on Love Island.

“This review led us to extend our support processes for this year’s series to a level that we consider industry-leading,” it said.

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Source: BBC, Hollywood Reporter