‘Love Island’ bosses have hit back at former contestant Chris Williamson’s suggestion that Islanders are allowed to enjoy time together without being on camera, and are even permitted to leave the villa once a week.
Producers responded to the comments made by Chris during his podcast, ‘Modern Wisdom’, in which he spilled the beans on his time on the show.
Chris - who lasted two and a half weeks on the very first series of ‘Love Island’ in 2015 - said: “Not many people know about [it] at all… but yeah, once a week we were allowed to leave the villa and weren’t filmed so none of the viewers would ever know.
“There was a day every week when footage wasn’t needed, which was liberating as you could talk about anything.”
He also suggested that during quieter moments, a producer would come in to help “capitalise on storylines”, adding: “At the end of the day, ITV2 need an hour of good TV every night so they can’t really wait weeks for people in there to make a move or address certain things.
“That said, what you see on screen is an accurate portrayal of what goes on.”
However, while an ITV spokesperson has not denied Chris’s claims, they have insisted that times have changed in the past three series and that they were no longer up to date.
An ITV statement read (via Digital Spy): “Occasionally in the past, some Islanders have been taken out of the villa - for example last year all of the girls were taken out for beauty treatments - but this is at the producers’ discretion and it is very much done on an ad hoc basis (as opposed to a set day each week).
“The majority of the dates, which are filmed, take place away from the villa.”
This isn’t the first time this series that producers have been forced to speak out during this year’s run, with a spokesperson previously having to deny that Dani Dyer and Jack Fincham had been liking each other’s posts on Instagram during their time in hiding.
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