I Kissed A Boy’s Ollie King tried to sabotage Love Island to make a point about representation
I Kissed A Boy contestant Ollie King admits that he tried to ‘sabotage’ Love Island. (BBC)
Ollie King, who appeared on the first season of the UK’s first ever gay dating show I Kissed a Boy, has revealed that he once tried to ‘sabotage’ Love Island – and for a for good reason.
It’s hard to believe that it was the year 2023 when the UK got its first ever gay dating show in the form of the BBC’s Dannii Minogue-fronted I Kissed a Boy.
Aside from helping 16 queer men on their quest to find love, the show, which premiered in May, heralded candid conversations on everything from body struggles and the difficulties of finding romance on gay apps, to the realities of topping and bottoming.
It was a frank portrayal of what life is like for many gay men up and down the country, and after so many years without that sort of representation, it was a huge breath of fresh air.
For Ollie King, though – one half of the only couple from the show who are still together – his relationship to the lack of LGBTQ+ representation on TV was personal; so much so that he previously tried to sabotage I Kissed a Boy‘s heterosexual counterpart, Love Island.
Revealing that he actually applied for Love Island “a few years back” to Metro.co.uk, King, 27, admitted that he told producers he was bisexual, which was (obviously) a “white lie”.
King, who reached the end of I Kissed a Boy with fellow moustachioed heartthrob Dan Harry, did have a genuine reason for applying, though.
“I know it sounds sad, but I wanted to go there and steal the money when you could for the scandal. Then it would come out that ‘Ollie is not actually bi, he’s gay and he’s stolen the money’,” said King.
On previous series’ of Love Island, the winning couple were asked if they wanted to ‘steal’ or ‘split’ the prize fund, though nobody ever did, so the twist was scrapped in recent outings.
“My whole prerogative was to be like, ‘Where’s our representation? Where’s our dating shows?'” King continued.
“If I can go on there and claim I’m bi, hopefully, I can get to the end and steal the money or whatever and then basically just mess up a whole system of it,” he explained.
“I would have been a hero in the gay world.”
As Dannii Minogue said over the course of I Kissed a Boy‘s eight-episode run in the Italian masseria, though, the path to love is never straight – and we’re glad that King hit our TV screens to give us an exceptionally steamy shower scene with partner Dan. Gay rights.
The younger Minogue will be back to play Cupid in I Kissed a Girl – a sapphic spin-off in the same format. Casting has already opened.
Love Island bosses have previously called casting gay contestants on the series “logistically difficult“.
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