Featured Image Credit: wednesdayspodcast/Instagram
Topics: Love Island, TV And Film
Gregory Robinson
Love Island star Grace Jackson has opened up about the truth behind her text message scandal.
The All Stars 2025 contestant, 26, said she felt ‘publicly humiliated’ by the texts, which allegedly show her saying she would ‘do anything to win the show’.
Grace’s last couple of days in the villa were overshadowed by fellow Love Island: All Stars alum Olivia Hawkins dropping the bombshell about the alleged messages, which she claimed were sent to a mutual friend.
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However Grace has vehemently denied sending them, despite Olivia’s insistence that she had ‘receipts’ to prove her claim, with fellow islander Samie Elishi supporting this claim, stating that she also saw the texts.
Screenshots circulating on social media appear to show Jackson messaging her ex-boyfriend Joey Essex, writing: "I am being dead serious we can bet on it. I will win this. I’ll do everything and anything in my power to win babe."
But Essex's reps told Cosmopolitan: "We understand a lot of these messages doing the rounds on social media to be fake and not from Joey."
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After leaving the villa in South Africa, Grace and her beau Luca Bish, 25, spoke about the controversy during an appearance on the podcast Wednesdays.
Co-host Melisa Tattam said: "So Olivia comes out and just says, 'I’ve seen these screenshots?'"
Grace replied: "Whatever she was trying to do there completely backfired. I felt so humiliated, like publicly humiliated.
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“I was sat there trying to defend myself, everybody around the fire pit was nodding like 'yeah we’ve seen the screenshots'.
"I just felt so embarrassed and I felt because that’s not in my character.”
“All I could do was defend myself with words. I didn’t have my phone, I didn’t have a clue what was going on on the outside.
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“Then I’m saying who’s fabricated these screenshots. Who’s got it in for me?”
Luca said Grace ‘burst into tears’ over the text message controversy, saying: “It wasn’t on camera but at dinner, they keep girls and boys separate, I could see she was upset.
"I went over and they (the producers) were like please, leave Grace alone and then she burst into tears.
He also shared how Grace had many sleepless nights in the villa because of the scandal. “She didn’t sleep for three nights,” he revealed
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“Them three nights the boys and the girls were kept separate, so like same sex beds.
“I was downstairs in the living room and she’d come down saying ‘I can’t sleep and stuff’ so that’s when I started thinking this is getting a bit too much.”
Grace added: “It was really damaging, then it’s backtracking on the final you know girls coming over saying "I’m really sorry, I’ve not seen the screenshots.
“So don't sit there and back it saying I've seen the screenshots and make me feel ridiculous.
“I felt like I was going insane because I knew I hadn't said it.”
When asked by co-host Sophie Habboo if the scandal had shifted her friendships with any of the girls who were in the villa, Grace declared: “I clearly didn’t have friendships with them.”