Love Island is only a couple of weeks away and we cannot wait to see hot singles cracking on in that beautiful Majorcan villa once again.
With the official lineup now confirmed, an ITV boss has said that the cast this year is more diverse, but there won't be any gay contestants in this series.
This comes a few weeks after ITV announced filtered photos would be banned during auditions for the show
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Speaking to Radio Times, ITV commissioner Amanda Stavri said that having gay contestants presents some "logistical difficulty." She said:
"In terms of gay Islanders, I think the main challenge is regarding the format of Love Island. There's a sort of logistical difficulty, because although Islanders don't have to be 100 per cent straight, the format must sort of give [the] Islanders an equal choice when coupling up."
"With our dating shows, such as The Cabins, there is much more sexual diversity," added Amanda. "The formats don't have as many restrictions as Love Island. So we're very sort of mindful of that across our programming on ITV and dating series. But that's the difficulty with Love Island."
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We've seen how this format would be tricky with the few bisexual contestants we've had so far on Love Island.
Love Island bisexual contestants
There have been bisexual contestants on Love Island in the past.
The show's only same-sex couple was Katy Salmon and Sophie Gradon, who dated during season 3. Gradon sadly died in 2018.
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Megan Barton-Hanson from season 4 is bisexual and has fully backed a gay Love Island series, according to Pink News.
Kyra Green in Love Island USA spoke openly about her bisexuality from the start in season 1.
Fellow contestant Emily Salch then started to open up to Kyra about her bisexuality. For a moment, we thought the two would couple up, but Emily chose Texas man Weston Richey.
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"The line-up will be announced within time and it goes without saying that we want to encourage greater inclusivity and diversity," said Amanda
Love Island rumoured contestants 2021
Amanda told Radio Times that there's been over 1,000 applications to the show this year.
"There's been more applications than ever. They've whittled it down and we're all very pleased. We've got a big sort of pool at the moment and we need to sort of work out who to put in the opening line-up and who sort of to hold back, you know as a bombshell - we need the bombshells!" she said.
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This season's rumoured contestants are: Alisha LeMay, Ellis Iyayi, Zack Chugg, Alexis Bailey, Harley Benn, Toluwa Adepeju, Aimee-Rose Francis, Jay Munro and James Price.
Since May bank holiday, ITV has teased us with two trailers of the upcoming series.
Love Island comes to ITV2 on Monday 28th June at 9pm.
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Featured Image Credit: ITV/Canva
Topics: Reality TV, TV and Film, TV and Entertainment, LGBTQ+, Love Island