Laura Whitmore
From landing the job of a lifetime hosting winter Love Island to losing close friend Caroline Flack, it’s been a turbulent six months for Laura Whitmore. Here, she opens up about her life in the spotlight so far ›
“I’ve had some really bad lows but I’ve also had some great life experiences”
IT WOULD BE FAIR TO SAY THAT THIS YEAR HAS BEEN A BIT OF A weırd ONE FOR LAURA WHITMORE.
“There have been highs and lows,” she says.“But we have had some really good days.” At the start of 2020, Whitmore landed what is arguably the biggest job in TV, hosting winter Love Island in Cape Town, South Africa. It was a dream gig for her – but it was bittersweet. Close friend Caroline Flack had stepped down from the role weeks earlier after she was charged with assaulting her boyfriend. With Flack’s blessing, Whitmore took the job, to rave reviews.
But then, in February, came a blow nobody was expecting: Flack devastatingly took her own life. It was a huge knock for Whitmore and her ITV colleagues. So, after the Love Island final, everyone took a month off to grieve and regroup. During that time the country (and the world) found itself plunged into deeper turmoil as the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic suddenly took hold.
It’s for that reason that on this particularly sunny March afternoon, I’m not interviewing Whitmore in person as planned, but instead over the phone. She’s sitting on the balcony of her north-London home with her dog, Mick, while I’m calling from my bedroom-cumoffice in south London.
“I am OK. It’s a beautiful day and I have a cup of tea and I can’t complain given everything that’s going on at the moment. My friend called the other day and the first thing he said was,‘What the f*ck is going on?’” she laughs.“We need to remember to have the good times because 2020 has been weird. I’ve had really bad lows, but I also have a wonderful boyfriend [she is dating comedian and Love Island voiceover artist Iain Stirling], wonderful family and I’ve had some great life experiences.”
When we speak, it’s unclear whether another season of Love Island will go ahead this year, as TV productions have been put on hold worldwide. But the money is on Whitmore taking over the role permanently when it does eventually return to our screens. Reports have claimed she has been offered £1million to do so.
This would have seemed unimaginable to Whitmore 12 years ago. Back then she was in her final year of a Broadcast Journalism
“I definitely had insecurities”
degree in Dublin and doing a work placement at a local radio station, Newstalk, doing “all the shit jobs”. But in 2008, Whitmore, who grew up in Bray, Ireland, spotted a competition to become the face of MTV News Europe.“I had no idea how to get to the big lights of London and a job like that.”
A “terrible video of me waffling” was uploaded to MySpace and then she was invited to London for an audition, judged by Emma Willis, Alesha Dixon and DJ Trevor Nelson. No biggie. She won the competition and moved to London a month later. On her first day she was flown to LA to interview Chris Martin on the red carpet at the MTV Video Music Awards.“I had this brilliant job but my lifestyle wasn’t one of an MTV presenter,” she says.
Whitmore was totally skint and didn’t get her first paycheque for three months.“I was on television every day but I didn’t have a hair and make-up artist – I didn’t have a stylist, I didn’t have any money… For me, the hardest part was feeling like I didn’t fit in. I went to LA and everybody looked like superstars. I was interviewing Katy Perry and I’m there all pale and pasty and doing my make-up myself, really badly. I definitely had insecurities about sticking out. When you’re younger, all you want to do is fit in, and then the older you get, you don’t want to fit in, you want to stand out.”
But Whitmore loved the work, and as her profile rose, she won bigger presenting gigs, including a co-hosting role on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! Now! with Joe Swash, and later, a slot on BBC Radio 5 Live. She also took part in the 2016 series of Strictly Come Dancing.
However, Whitmore has found fame – and the paparazzi attention that comes with being in the public eye – incredibly tough at times. Especially so when she appeared on Strictly. She recalls paparazzi waiting outside her house and “upskirting” her on one occasion.“I was home by myself. You feel threatened with all these guys outside your house. I had my dog and groceries and I remember someone getting a picture when my skirt blew up. It was printed in a newspaper. I didn’t say anything at the time because
I felt embarrassed to make a big deal out of it. There were bigger things going on in the world than me complaining that someone had seen my pants, but it felt really intrusive.”
Another time she was so scared to leave her house for a meeting with her accountant that she called the police.“I said,‘I feel a little bit threatened.’ And one of them said, ‘If you go outside and pose for a picture they said they’ll go away.’ I remember thinking,‘I’m not posing for pictures outside my house because the day I do that is the day I enable it.’ I didn’t leave my house that day. I felt like, for all those great days of interviewing people and being paid to do something I love, this is what I have to accept…”
Which is why when Whitmore was approached about the Love Island job she was reluctant to take it at first. “I love the show, but when I was asked to do the series I remember thinking, ‘God, I love this, but f*cking hell this is going to be the paps again. I had purposely
moved away from that and was trying to do things at work that would put me in a different light so that I wasn’t just the blonde girl in the dress – I wanted to show that I had a brain. [I thought] ‘Do I want to put myself up for that again?’”
She adds,“You do a show that big and people want to write about it and put it in tabloids and magazines. So I knew, yes, it’s got great parts to it, but it’s also got negative parts too.”
As well as the inevitable paparazzi attention, there was the difficult circumstance of how it came about – the situation with her close friend Caroline Flack. The TV presenter – who had hosted the show and its spinoff, Love Island: Aftersun, for five years – had stepped down after being arrested and charged with the assault of her boyfriend, Lewis Burton, in December. She was awaiting trial.
fLACK AND WHITMORE
WERE MATES. To make things even more complicated, Whitmore’s boyfriend, Iain Stirling, 32, is also part of the Love Island family. So she knew there would be double the scrutiny.
“Obviously you’re delighted that ITV trust you to do such a big show, but a friend of yours is also going through hell… Caroline had messaged me first to say,‘I hope you get it,’ which was really nice. You’re like, ‘Oh yay, I get to do this but, no, this isn’t how I want to get to do it. It was a really weird way to get a job.”
She adds, “I love doing live TV. I’d worked with most of the crew doing I’m A Celebrity… and MTV, so it just felt very comfortable. The show was the easiest thing. It was everything around it that I couldn’t cope with.