Ten years ago, the dark satire Unreal premiered, telling the salacious behind-the-scenes story of a fictional Bachelor-style show. By that point, the reality TV dating world's racist biases and stereotypes — particularly as they pertained to Black cast members — had been well-chronicled, so much so that Season 2 of the series dove head-first into the issue by focusing on the "radical" casting of a Black suitor searching for the woman of his dreams. It would be a little less than a year until its long-running IRL inspiration finally produced its first Black Bachelorette, and another several years before the first Black Bachelor.
The reality dating genre has only proliferated and grown more convoluted since then, but the experiences of Black participants in many of those offerings remain nearly as stagnant as they were a decade ago. The erratic seventh season of Love Island USA, which concludes Sunday, offers a counter (somewhat) to the form. The long-running British import has never explicitly targeted non-white audiences, but the show has taken a surprising turn in recent seasons by deemphasizing whiteness.
First, let's talk sheer numbers: In the first episode of this season, five out of the 10 contestants were Black. And even as new conventionally sexy singles ("bombshells," in Love Island parlance) have come into the villa, and many participants have been "dumped" from the island, Black people have remained a consistent presence.
It's been especially notable to observe contestants Chelley and Olandria moving throughout this process, and how they've been received and perceived by their castmates and "America." They were the first two to enter the villa — in hindsight, it seems producers may have been priming them to be the breakout stars of the show — and they immediately hit it off, encouraging and advising one another on their romantic pursuits. It certainly helps that their "connections" among male castmates haven't overlapped; no jealousy or competitive spirit to be had there. But there's also the undeniable fact they're both dark-skinned women existing in a TV genre (and world) where Black singles — and especially women who look like Chelley and Olandria — have historically been treated as undesirable one-offs. Past participants have even revealed not-at-all-subtle "preferences" for mixed-race paramours (read: ethnically ambiguous and/or white-presenting).
Their reality show savvy suggests they understand how easy it can be for the Black woman to become the villain in the editing room. Recall, for instance, when Chelley became upset when Huda seemed a little too into kissing Chelley's partner Ace during one of the show's ridiculous challenges; when a sullen Huda tried to talk to her about it, Chelley deflected by saying, "Tonight, I don't wanna have a chat … I don't wanna say anything out of anger or anything like that." Sure, Chelley was being hypocritical — during that very same challenge she vigorously made out with Chris twice, whom she was still "exploring" as a possible "connection." But on a show where jealousies are magnified and physical challenges seem crafted to brew conflict, she went out of her way to avoid it — and Olandria had her back, as always.
Another telling moment: When Huda complimented Olandria's "grace" in dealing with the sight of her former connection Taylor canoodling with new bombshell Clarke, Olandria replied, "Have to. I'm not finna crash – I know that's probably how you'd do it. No offense." Huda laughed at this good-naturedly, just as the rest of us did, because Huda (along with Amaya) has in fact become known as 'the cryer' of the season. It's unspoken but easily understood that if Olandria or Chelley behaved as Huda and Amaya have throughout the series, they likely would have found it much more difficult to endear themselves to the guys in the villa and the viewers who sometimes decide upon their fates.
On the subject of things unspoken — it's impossible to separate the season's racial and ethnic diversity from the show's mealy-mouthed handling of behind-the-scenes drama. Two different castmates, Yulissa and Cierra, unceremoniously left the villa after clips and posts resurfaced showing each woman had used racial slurs before appearing on the show. (Rachel Lindsay's Bachelorette season faced a similar problem.)
Love Island producers haven't directly named these actions as the reasons for their departures, at least to the audience; in last Sunday's episode, cheeky narrator Iain Stirling rushed by the announcement about Cierra, telling viewers it was "due to a personal situation." So if you're the rare Love Island viewer who isn't also extremely online, you'd have no way of knowing the circumstances are less than benign. It's unclear whether the participants remaining on the island have any clue about any of their castmates' histories. (Throw in since-departed Austin, initially paired with Chelley, who appears to have reposted pro-Trump content on TikTok.) Cut off from the outside world, cast members presumably only know what the producers choose to tell them.
Aside from the implication that the producers couldn't be bothered to perform a thorough social media scrape on their participants — did this same team work on Emilia Pérez? — their coyness around the cast's prior histories only reiterates the inability of Love Island and other reality series to withstand the nuances of day-to-day life. Only very rarely on these shows does harsh reality break through from subtext to text, leading to difficult conversations and possibly even breakups over politics, identity and beliefs. More often, everyone involved is invested in keeping the fantasy of fluff and kitsch afloat while obscuring the opportunity for any legitimately frictive interaction; viewers are left to fill in the gaps on their own. In the case of Love Island, though, they also seemingly have a say — even if the show doesn't want to admit it.
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