Jacques O'Neill says entering the Love Island villa was the "worst decision of his life".
The 23-year-old rugby player has opened up on how he just "couldn't cope" days before his exit. Jacques made a shock entrance to the villa having already dated current Islander Gemma Owen before either of them had appeared on the ITV2 reality show.
But after a bust up with Adam Collard, Jacques made the decision to return home. The Cumbrian athlete said following Adam's arrival he "just wanted to go home" to "get myself right", reports OK!.
And even though the show's producers attempted to convince him to reconsider, he says he feared things could soon "go horribly wrong" if he hadn't chosen to leave. Jacques even suggested things with Adam could have progressed to becoming "physical".
"At home, you can remove yourself from situations, but in there you had to deal with every situation, and in that moment I took my microphone off, and walked straight through the front doors because I just wanted to get out of that place," he said in an interview with The Sun.
"Producers tried coming to me, they were like, 'Jacques, are you ok?', I was saying, 'I don’t want to speak to you or anyone. I want to be left to myself'. It was too much.
"I was saying to them, 'This is more than a TV show to me', it was genuine feelings involved and my headspace wasn’t right to be in a TV show. I dealt with stuff in there that I’ve never dealt with in my life."
Although viewers saw Jacques depart the villa on July 12, he has revealed he actually left two days earlier. Even after leaving Love Island showrunners allegedly attempted to encourage Jacques to return to the villa one day after his exit by pulling him for a "welfare chat" and assuring him that he was popular with viewers.
The 23 year old explained that he had been temporarily calmed down by Mike, who he described as "the big boss". But "in the end" he said he just "couldn’t deal with it". Jacques went onto say: "Doing Love Island was the worst decision of my life.
"I was ready to break down. I was feeling so mentally drained, I just wanted to go home and get myself right."
Jacques, who was diagnosed with ADHD at age nine, spoke with Paige Thorne about his diagnosis whilst in the villa, telling her that it wasn't just about "not being able to concentrate", but also about "feeling anxious quite a lot".
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