Mike Spencer, executive producer of ITV’s Love Island, has answered a slew of questions from fans ahead of the premiere of the eighth season of the iconic dating show.
Participating in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, Spencer revealed why in recent seasons, the show appears to cast many more influencers compared to previous ones.
It comes after fans took to Twitter to express their hopes for Love Island this year, with many saying that they wanted producers to bring back “normal babes”.
One person wrote: “Love Island needs to stop scouting influencers and go back to picking random civilians again. Shirley the hairdresser from a village in Berkshire perhaps. That’s where the gold is.”
Another said: “Bring back the Love Island days when the villa was full of bricklayers, hairdressers, plumbers, recruitment workers, nurses etc, not influencers.”
A third added: “I need Tesco staff, BT engineers and Primark workers on this year’s Love Island. The whole influencer/model thing is mad tired.”
During the AMA session, one person asked about the show’s casting process.
“Why so many influencers. Why is the age of cast members also decreasing? Why can you not only find a more diverse cast but also a cast with diverse tastes?”
Spencer replied: “I think every year we have a similar demographic usually sitting around the 18-30 mark. That does change year on year.”
The oldest cast members to ever take part in Love Island were Jordan Ring, Marcel Sommerville, and Paul Knops, who were all 31 years old when they appeared on the show in various years.
The oldest female cast member was Sophie Gradon, who appeared in the second series in 2015 at the age of 30.
When it comes to casting people of a certain occupation, Spencer said that the show’s producers do not specifically seek out influencers.
“The main casting requirement is being single and looking for love,” he explained. “I wouldn’t want to group everyone with a social media presence as ‘influencers’ and judge more on the individual personality of that person.
“I think we have lots of people who have had a variety of job roles across the years.”
In answer to a separate but similar question, Spencer added: “Last series we began with a teacher, estate agent, waitress, footballer, bricklayer, club promoter to name a few, and in past years we’ve had an NHS doctor, a pharmacist, a scientist, and a humanitarian aid worker.
“Personally, I find we live in a climate where most young people growing up have a lot of social media platforms they use and with the popularity of everyday people becoming famous on sites such as TiKTok, by default a lot of people are ‘influencers’.”
