Amber Gill has revealed that Love Island bosses changed her contract at the last minute after she was initially cast as a “bombshell”.
The TV star, who was an original member of the cast and won the ITV2 series in 2019 with rugby player Greg O’Shea, said she was initially asked to enter the villa later to mix things up.
She told Fleur East’s The Reality Of Reality TV podcast: “When I got called in the UK, they were, like, ‘Oh, we want you to be a bombshell…’ I was, like, ‘No, I don’t want to do that’.
“They were, like, ‘No, no, it’s great, being a bombshell’s great. You’ll have such an impact on the show.’
“Me personally, I’m not the type to steal someone’s man or be really confident and going in and be, like, I like him, like that’s just not me. But my auntie was, like, ‘Look, this opportunity isn’t going to come around often. Just go.’
“So, I went and then halfway through the lockdown in Spain, the execs all come in unannounced to my villa and are, like, ‘Right, we’re going to change your contract around a little bit … we want you to go in as an original.’
“Looking back now, I would have been the worst bombshell in history because I would have walked in and been, like, ‘No, I don’t like any of these guys’.”
Gill also shared her memories of her former partner, Michael Griffiths, returning from Casa Amor with another girl.
She said: “A memory that I hold so close at the minute is that Caroline (Flack, the show’s former presenter, who died earlier this year) was obviously there.
“She was just holding me so tightly and I just felt calmer because I knew that she had me so tightly as well. I know she’s supposed to be very neutral, and she wasn’t neutral, she was mad, and I could tell.
“I had her there and I felt like I’d got a bit of calmness and a bit of strength from her holding me so tightly. She was sort of radiating to me, like, ‘You’re going to be OK’.
“She was, like, ‘I can’t believe he’s done this’ and she was saying everything, like ‘Why have you done this?’ so I didn’t have to do that. So actually I loved that, I love that memory so much now.”
Gill also said she temporarily deleted Instagram after sharing posts in support of Black Lives Matter.
She said: “I went to the Black Lives Matter protest because it means a lot to me, and I feel very passionately about it. To be honest, anything to do with people’s human rights… I stuck to the government guidelines heavily but I felt, like, people’s human rights were more important than social distancing at that point. I just did.
“And that’s how I felt and that’s how a lot of other people felt. I was trying to be safe, so I wore a mask, I was handing out hand sanitiser, I had my gloves on, I was doing everything that I possibly could, but it was just something that had to be done then and there because it needs to be heard. But that was a really, really hard time because I lost thousands of followers.”
She added: “I had to turn it off because I wanted to fight these people and be, like, ‘No, it’s not about all lives matter, it’s about all lives do matter but when black lives start to matter more then all lives can matter but now the focus is on black lives matter’. But then I felt like I was just repeating myself to people that didn’t want to hear it so, yeah, deleted the app.”
– The Reality Of Reality TV with Fleur East is available every Tuesday from Apple podcasts, Spotify, the Hits Radio website and all mainstream podcast providers.