Former Love Island contestant Ched Uzor has spoken about the ITV2 series that aims to being love into a sunny villa…
Ched believes the more recent seasons of Love Island are “tame” compared to the earlier years of the show, suggesting that modern-day viewers would oppose some of the more “raw” scenes when the series first started.
Speaking exclusively to stocklytics.com, Ched said:
“I feel like the earlier series were a bit more raw – but that’s to do with the viewers as well. I feel like the viewers complain about quite a lot these days, so they would have to tame it down for some people if you want to keep them watching. At the end of the day it’s still a business and a TV show, so they have to tame it down.
“Before it was crazy – it was just people doing and saying what they want; everyone was having sex and shouting at each other, it was like Geordie Shore! I feel like as time goes on, someone always has something to say about stuff like that, so it definitely wasn’t what it used to be back when it first started. Everything’s just a bit more tame now. Remember when they used to have the tweet challenge? They were using some savage tweets! Even in our season we had that challenge but it wasn’t as savage, so everything’s tamed down a bit.”
Ched, who was a Casa Amour arrival in series 6 of the ITV2 show, then revealed what goes on off-camera in the villa, claiming that some conversations between Islanders are forged directly by on-site producers in a similar vein to that of ‘structured reality series’ such as Made In Chelsea (E4) and The Only Way Is Essex (ITVBe).
“With regards to the production, they don’t tell you what to say as such, but say I were to break up with someone, they would definitely tell someone else to go and talk about it,” he revealed. “They essentially encourage conversations to happen. They don’t do it all of the time, but there’s certain scenes that they do it for. If there’s a big situation – let’s say if Mollie and Callum decided to get back together – they would probably tell someone to go and speak about it with someone else.
“As viewers you want to get a breakdown of what’s happening and what other people’s thoughts are on the situation. There are certain scenes where you’re just flowing and talking, so it’s not all scripted – I feel like people would catch onto that if that was the case. You don’t know what they’re going to use for television either – you could be talking for two hours and they end up taking a little five minutes out of it.
“There’s a lot the viewers don’t see. For instance, dates – they could take up to seven hours, but people would only get to see it for about 10 minutes. Some dates and challenges take pretty much the whole day to film. When I was on my dates in the season that I featured, we were there for about six hours. You have to travel to the location which is often in quite a secluded part of the island, then it could be windy or rainy for example and you have to stop and start everything again!”
