Love Island USA will be taking steps to do better next season!
Season 7 has been a hot mess for many reasons — but a huge part of that has been the fact that there have been so many racism scandals! Two contestants, Yulissa Escobar and Cierra Ortega, have been removed from the show after they were caught using racial slurs.
There’s also new controversy brewing around Huda Mustafa, who has been accused of lip-syncing a racial slur in a resurfaced video (though viewers are divided on whether or not she actually said the word). And Austin Shepard, who has already been dumped from the island, hit back at his own racism allegations after resharing controversial content on his social media pages.
Related: Jeremiah Reacts To Cierra’s Exit Amid ‘Weird’ Racial Slur Controversy
This has been a massive problem this season — and it started unfolding within days! Yulissa was booted SO fast! If fans discovered this stuff so easily and quickly, then that shows production is really doing the bare minimum when casting! Just saying!
So, moving forward, production is going to be cracking down a lot harder on potential Islanders to get the most unproblematic cast they can! A production source told The US Sun on Wednesday:
“Starting next season, we are going to get some people working on looking way more into the social media presence and the articles, pictures and public things that potential contestants did before trying to get onto the show.”
Why weren’t they doing this already?! It seems like a no-brainer in this day and age!
The confidant said the show will bring on a whole background checking team to accomplish this, noting:
“We are going to hire more people to dig into people’s past and things they did in public and really brush out their social media and old posts to see if anything controversial came out of there. We will be really digging way more and deeply in each participants past, and make sure that their ‘records’ are clean of racist, xenophobic or sexist words or behavior.”
Heck, they just need to hire a few TikTok sleuths and problem solved. LOLz!
As they have demonstrated with the exits this season, they will maintain a no-tolerance policy for any discriminatory online activity:
“If there is anything racist, sexist or offensive in there, the person won’t be allowed to be considered as a potential participant on the show. We can’t have any more situations where we deal with racist behavior.”
The whole process of how they hire cast members is going to be revamped:
“We are going to make some adjustments for the recruitment of new participants, in order to not have to deal with bad stuff like this, which has given a bad image to the show and to the brand. We absolutely cannot have another season like the one we are about to wrap up.”
The production insider added that this season has been incredibly “draining” for them all because of the racism drama, which has been very “heavy” for them to deal with. The source expressed:
“It breaks some of the dynamics of the show, and gives us a very bad image because we should have done better at making sure that everything was clear and nothing bad was done in their past, from public appearances to social media posts, etc…”
That’s why they’re so committed to doing better to protect the franchise:
“It won’t ever happen again starting next season, that is for sure. We are going to do everything to make sure participants are great people, and didn’t say bad things in their past.”
Frankly, we’d be more surprised if they said they weren’t going to be adding more protocols. At this point, it’s the least they can do!
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[Image via Peacock]
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