I applied for Love Island as a joke. Then I got called into an audition

‘I didn’t realise you were supposed to dress like you’re going on a date’

4 years ago | UPDATED 4 years ago

Everyone likes to joke about applying for Love Island ironically. You and your mates laugh about the prospect of actually being in the villa, cracking on with other Islanders and how you’d be perceived by the public. You might have even joked, half seriously, about making an audition video before. Wouldn’t that be funny? If we submitted an awful audition as a joke? But 21-year-old Goldsmiths student actually did that. And then forgot she had even done it.

One evening, when the student had been smoking a lot and was dazed and sweaty after getting back from doing a big food shop, she thought “fuck it” and filmed herself forward rolling into the camera, doing finger guns and introducing herself. She submitted the audition tape and then promptly forgot about it, until months later when the producers called her.

The Goldsmiths student spoke to The Tab about her awkward phone audition, being mistaken for a staff member at her face to face casting in the ITV offices, and ultimately regretting the whole experience (but still hoping to be in Casa Amor).

‘I was just joking about applying, and then I did’

The Love Island hopeful decided to apply for Love Island after watching the last season every day in the summer. The girl she was staying with whilst on holiday In New York was obsessed with the show and encouraged her to apply.

She told The Tab: “So the girl I was staying with on holiday in New York absolutely loved Love Island and we were constantly joking about applying. Then one day I was like, fuck it, and I filmed the audition tape. In the tape I forward rolled into the camera frame, did finger guns at the camera and said ‘I’m single and this is how I roll.’

“I also submitted really bad pictures of me. You’re supposed to submit really bland, unfiltered pictures, like for modelling. They were not good.”

‘I completely forgot I applied, then the producers called me and asked loads of questions’

The student got a call from someone at ITV in October. She was bombarded with questions about her life, which she answered, like whether she’d been on TV before and the type of guys she was into. Even at the end of the call, she still had no idea why ITV were calling her.

“I kept getting this call about October time, then eventually I answered like ‘Hi, why are you calling me?’ and someone said ‘Hi it’s ITV, we want to talk to you about something”, she said. “Then they fired a bunch of questions at me like ‘Have you ever been on TV? Tell us funny things about yourself. What do you study? What are your interests? What kind of person would you say you are? What kind of guy are you into?’

“I answered the questions but I was so confused, I was like ‘what is this for?’ and then they said Love Island and I suddenly remembered the whole audition tape fiasco. Then they invited me to a physical audition.”

‘I looked a mess at my face to face audition’

The potential Islander’s actual physical audition was a month later, in ITV studios in London. It was raining on the day, and she was dishevelled after walking in the rain to the studios. She had no idea what you were supposed to wear to the audition, so just showed up in what she would normally wear.

“I was a mess. I was wearing baggy grey cargo trousers, Doc Marten boots, a grey smock that was big enough to put three of me in and a beret. I had just had my hair cut, it looked gross, and my fake eyelashes were falling off. I didn’t realise you had to dress like you were going on a date. A sponge could have looked sexier than me”, she said.

‘Someone mistook me for ITV staff’

The Goldsmiths student arrived at the studio and went to reception to ask where she needed to go. The receptionist mistook her for a member of staff, but quickly realised and tried to cover it up. Badly.

She said: “When I first rocked up to the bit of the studios I was supposed to be in, I walked up to reception and said hi. The person at the desk said to me ‘Do you mind taking this tray of drinks over there?’ And I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m here for the Love Island auditions.’ You know when someone is surprised but they have to cover it really quickly? She was like ‘Oh, of course, I mean – do you want a cup of tea – the facilities are all over there.’ They definitely thought I was a runner or someone who worked for ITV. ”

‘The other women in the audition room were unreal looking’

Then she was taken from reception to the audition room where she was asked to sit with 30 other women who were auditioning. She was a little bit intimidated, to say the least.

“After I had been sat in the waiting area for a bit I was called up to the audition room, which was this massive room filled with women who were just unreal looking. I feel like we get really desensitised when they’re actually on the screen. You’re so used to people looking good on TV, that they just look kinda normal. There were 30 women in this room and they were all just unreal. Everyone had something special about them. Amazing makeup, amazing hair.”

‘I didn’t know people’s bodies looked like that in real life’

The other women in the room looked like previous Love Island contestants, but she was really shocked seeing them look so perfect in real life.

She said: “They were all fake tanned, white teeth, no obvious surgery though but maybe you just can’t tell. Everyone else was wearing bodycon dresses, Missguided, shit like that. I didn’t realise people’s figures actually looked like that, I just thought they were edited on Instagram. Honestly, there were people there with bodies I didn’t even have when I was a teenager. Teeny tiny waists, super perky boobs. I was like ‘My boobs are down to my belly button right now, how are you so perfect?'”

‘They made us fill out a questionnaire about ourselves’

Next, the ITV staff asked the women to fill out a questionnaire where they tell the producers about themselves. It included the same kind of questions that she went through in the phone interview, and everyone was taking it really seriously.

“We had to fill out a questionnaire that was like, ‘Tell us about yourself’ and I could see all the girls around me like taking it super seriously, writing like huge paragraphs for it and I was just like writing absolute bullshit because I was like ‘Oh I fooled about with the audition video like I didn’t take that seriously so why would I with this’. Like I’d love to go on Love Island, I think it would be fucking hilarious, but it’s not like my life goal.”

‘There were loads of Instagram influencers’

A lot of the women in the room were scouted, mainly from ITV finding their Instagram profiles and messaging them on there.

“You wouldn’t believe how many of the girls were like ‘Oh my god I got scouted via Instagram’ and I told them I applied ironically and they were like ‘what?’

“I was really surprised by the amount of women there that were Insta influencers and that’s how they’d been sourced and they were quite sure of themselves and their chances of getting on the show, way more than I was.”

‘I was taken into a room for a 5-10 minute screen test’

Then the student and a bunch of other women were lead into separate rooms and did screen tests with producers, on their own. This felt like the introductory interviews they use in the first episode. The point of this interview was to help gauge her vibe, which ended up being a complete car crash.

“We were taken in groups to another room and have like 5-10 minute screen tests individually”, she said. “They asked me where I was from, what my type is, etc. I don’t know why but I freaked out and said I was really into Kem Cetinay, from season three. I completely forgot about the existence of Eyal, who is way more my type.

“I said I was more into people’s personalities, and they said ‘Oh, so would you say you’re more attracted to people’s energies? That you’re spiritual?’ I think they’re really attentive to what you say in the auditions, and I could just feel them pigeon holing me into being this hippy dippy spiritual lass.”

‘They ask you if you have any skeletons in your closet’

As part of the questions in the screen test, the producers asked if she had engaged in any risky behaviour that would reflect badly on her if it came out when she was in the villa.

“They also asked me if I’d had anything dramatic in my life that happened and might come up and be bad press. And I was like ‘Nah I’m clean, nothin happening over here that’s bad’. Funny that they asked, though.”

‘The majority of women were white and blonde’

Despite diversity being a big deal for Love Island, and despite there being a few racially or culturally diverse women at the casting, the majority of people she saw were still white, blonde and middle class.

“The kind of women they have, it is quite interesting, you know everyone’s talking about diversity but even then, the majority were white, they were blonde. The majority of the women I spoke to didn’t seem to be of a working class background, they were middle class.”

‘They’re watching you and deciding the whole time’

Apparently the area where the Love Island hopeful was being held wasn’t just a waiting room, it was an area for them to assess how the girls interacted so they could choose how to interview them. There were two different interview options, a group interview with multiple producers or a single interview with one or two producers.

“I think even within that space where they were holding all 30 of us, I think they were deciding from there”, she said. “It determined which room we went into, because some people went the way that I went and some people went this way where they’d sit on sofas and they’d have kind of group discussion with a group of producers. Maybe that was another level of auditions.

“I do remember one woman saying to me before we went in for the screen test ‘Oh this is a good sign that we’re at this point, I think this is quite far in, in terms of rounds.'”

‘I was not what they were looking for’

“I feel like the producers were thinking like ‘How can we fuck this shit up, how can we bring in a girl to make all of the Islanders jealous’ and that was not me. Not the girl in all grey baggy clothing. But maybe they’ll still want me for Casa Amor, you never know!”

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