It’s well established by now that most Love Island contestants are scouted for the show by producers rather than applying themselves. While some lucky Islanders do still fill in the application form and find themselves in the villa a few months later, most of the cast are found on social media or on nights out.
It even seems that some Islanders are discovered after applying for other reality shows. Take Coco Lodge for example, who was reportedly lined up for the next series of Married At First Sight UK before ditching the E4 show to jet off to Casa Amor.
2018 Islander Niall Aslam, who quit the villa just one week into series four, has now revealed that things could have been very different for him as he originally applied to take part in First Dates NOT Love Island.
He revealed the surprising news in a new interview as he explained, “How I originally got on Love Island was I applied for First Dates, the Channel 4 show. I was on Xbox with my mate and I was like, ‘Let’s apply for this’, get a call back in London and they’re like, ‘We love you, you’re really funny’, this and this.
“Next thing, they’re like ‘Oh, the date didn’t show’, and then next thing I was like, ‘Cool’, and they were like, ‘Oh, but Love Island, we’ll put you through for that’. So I go on these auditions and I thought 100,000s of people were doing this, right, so I was just going on it and talking how I do and these people were laughing at me, well, with me I guess.”
“Next thing you know, I’m through, I’m through and next thing was I was the first one on and it all happened really fast, but the whole time of the process, they were like, ‘Niall, we love you be yourself. We just want you to be you’.
“They kept saying, ‘We just want you to be you. You’re great, be yourself’. So, I was like, ‘Perfect, I’ll be myself then'," Niall continued on the Murad Merali podcast.
While Niall originally claimed he left Love Island for “personal reasons”, he later spoke out about his Asperger’s syndrome before revealing he battled “stress-induced psychosis” after quitting the show and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Earlier this year, Niall released a TikTok in which he claimed how the show “wasn’t as it seemed” and explained how this led to him being hospitalised. He said, “I have autism spectrum disorder - that the show were aware of because they get your whole medical record. This might explain why I thought the show was all as it seems as I'm quite a literal thinker.
“When I got there, there were loads of little things that I didn't see coming; I thought you could just chat to whoever you want but it was all very set up in ways of like: ‘Don't talk to her', or: ‘No, you like that person.' I'm quite an unpredictable person and I think they want to be able to know what you're going to do next. The stress of this on top of quite a lot of other things started to really get to me."
Responding to the clip, an ITV spokesperson said, “All Islanders are free to make their own decisions regarding who they couple up with and the public vote or format decides who leaves the island, not producers.”