Love Island has been off our screens for almost two months, and as we're settling into new Married At First Sight, Made in Chelsea and even Strictly, the villa drama is still far from over.
This is mainly thanks to podcasts. Love Island stars just love hopping on a popular pod to spill some tea, have a whinge or even expose the Love island production team for wiping a storyline or given them a 'villain edit' and if you're Love Island 2025 icon Shakira Khan, you ignore all podcast requests until the big dogs come knocking – i.e. Paul C Brunson's We Need To Talk podcast.
The popular podcast has welcomed A-list guests like Katie Price, Kerry Katona, Nadiya Hussain, Maura Higgins and Tulisa Contostavlos over the last few months and yesterday, Paul invited Shakira to sit down and talk it out – and talk she did.
In addition to opening up about the now infamous girls' divide in the villa, her complicated relationship with Harry and her life before Love Island, Shakira revealed how her mum, Sukina, really feels about Harry now the show is done and dusted.
ICYMI, Sukina famously entered the villa on family day and refused to give her daughter's bae Harry Cooksley a hug in the wake of how he had treated her on the show (also her commentary on TikTok was consistently top tier). It was downright iconic. In fact, all the mum's were all iconic this year – that's the Real Housewives edition we deserve, let's be honest.
But weeks on, it seems Harry and Sukina's relationship is in a mildly better place, thanks in part to Shakira explaining that there were things the viewers didn't see thanks to the dreaded Love Island edit.
Speaking of her mum's initial reaction to Harry in the villa, Shakira explained to host Paul, 'That wasn't shocking. It wasn't shocking whatsoever, and I'd worked myself up a little bit beforehand, because I knew what the reaction was going to be.
'That's my mother all over...she's a strong woman. She raised strong-minded children and she wouldn't shy away from things, so if she's displeased, she's going to be displeased; she wasn't going to play happy families kumbaya.'
'She was letting him know. It was a statement. "I'm not going to hug you because I'm not happy with your behaviour, and I don't want you to think I'm accepting it because I haven't."
Paul then asked how things are now, to which Shakira continued, 'She said, "clean slate", because coming off [the show] you have conversations, you explain how it works, what they've not seen, what they've missed out on, and then my mum, again, from the segment she's seen, starts to see the bigger picture. '
She continued, 'And she said, "okay, I felt this way because I'm your mother and it's been hard to watch this for eight weeks. I can't speak to you and all I'm seeing is what I'm feeling through the screen." She's quite an empath, so if I'm upset, she's upset. She feels that.
'So then once we had a discussion about it, she said, "if you're happy, I'm happy – fresh start."'
WATCH: Love Island's Megan and Conor open up about life outside the villa
Ben Pulsford is a digital writer and producer at Bauer Media, creating content for Closer online and heatworld. Beyond his journalism, he dazzles as London drag queen Beary Poppins, co-hosting the Spill the Fizz podcast with Traitors series 2 star Diane Carson. If RuPaul asked grown-up Ben what he’d say to his seven-year-old self, it would be: 'Don’t worry, you grow up to score the gayest jobs on the planet — so hang in there, you little legend.'