I came into her bedroom to find she’d been up all night crying. Trolls were calling her the ugliest contestant ever
Savanna herself has said she was ‘starting to binge eat’ due to the stress: ‘I didn’t know what to do with my life because I was meant to be on standby... My mum was really worried about me.’
Then finally the call came. Savanna flew out again, more nervous than she had been to start with. She didn’t go into the main villa, but into Casa Amor (from where contestants can be ‘picked’ for promotion to the main villa — if they win the attention of a boy).
‘I was so nervous watching,’ Karen says. ‘It’s way worse than sending them off to school for the first time. I think she came across well, but she seemed so far away.’
One of the harsh realities of Love Island is that it is edited. The programme makers decide who gets airtime and who doesn’t. Karen feels strongly that her daughter wasn’t seen: ‘She was in for five days, but I barely saw her.’
Having failed to be picked to go to the main villa, Savanna sobbed all the way home on the plane.
‘I picked her up. She was disappointed obviously but at that point she seemed to be putting a brave face on it.
‘I did my best to be positive, “Oh well, you’ve done it. Let’s carry on with normal life.” But at that point she didn’t realise how little airtime she’d had. She kept asking, “Did you see this bit?” and I’d say, “No”.
‘It turns out she had had a connection with a boy — Wes Nelson. Not a sexual connection, but she had spent the night with him. They were up giggling and laughing and had to be told, “Go to sleep; lights out”. But it didn’t fit with the story they had planned for Wes.’
Wes could have taken Savanna to the main villa — ‘and he told her he was going to,’ says Karen.
ITV bosses say that due to time constraints it is not possible to show everything that happens. But what happened next is undeniably brutal.
‘Savanna had been offered counselling after she came out, but she said she didn’t need it. She thought she didn’t. But once she got back, she started to look online at what was being said about her.
‘On the second day, I came into the bedroom one morning and she was crying. She’d been up all night, scrolling through all the things that had been said about her, criticising her hair, saying she should just die. It was horrendous.’
Karen insisted Savanna call her new agent. ‘No one took her call. She phoned and messaged and no one would contact her. She had been ghosted. She was in shock, and so was I to be honest.
‘She’d given up work to do Love Island and she wasn’t earning, so she had to give up her flat. Yet there was no work for her.’
Love Island had left her marooned. Wasn’t she at least paid to be on the show? ‘No!’ says her mother. ‘She was paid £500 for the time she spent in the hotel beforehand, but that was it. Being on Love Island cost her, in so many ways.’
Savanna has now talked about how she ‘fell into a deep depression’ after Love Island.
‘She hid a lot of it from me,’ says Karen. ‘She just didn’t want to get out of bed. I was so worried about her, but I don’t think I realised the scale of it. She’s a good actress.
She’s had therapy since — she sorted it out herself — and I think she needed it. But at the time she didn’t want to admit to anyone that it had affected her so badly.’
The key to rebuilding her life came when she was approached by her previous bosses on the Thriller stage show, and invited back.
She has clawed back a career since, and does have a sizeable following on Instagram — 80,000 followers. Surely as a direct result of being on the show?
‘I’d say she’s built that up despite being on the show,’ says Karen. ‘She’s worked really hard to get her confidence back.’
Of course there are those who clearly do benefit from it. Arabella Chi caused waves in the villa in 2019 and has built a successful influencer career with 671,000 followers.
Her mother Eunice Denny admits she watches it herself, saying: ‘It’s one of those Marmite shows, people either love it or hate it, don’t they? It’s a guilty pleasure.’
That said, it’s a whole different matter seeing your daughter on the show. Eunice — who was a model herself (she appeared in her own bikini on 1970s show Sale Of The Century) says of the ‘blindfold kissing challenge’, ‘We were sat at home and I said to my husband Paul, “Are you OK with this?”. It’s not something every father would want to watch. He said “I’m treating it as if she’s an actress playing a role.” ’
Eunice, 66, now works as an events organiser, and started to watch it, she says, because clients were requesting Love Islanders to appear at their functions.
‘When Arabella told me she was going on it, of course I was apprehensive. It took me a little while to digest it, but I think my background in modelling probably helped both me and Paul. He was used to being backstage, seeing me get undressed with other people around.
‘What I found more difficult was watching Arabella being treated quite harshly by the rest of the group. Because she went in as a bombshell, different friendships and relationships had already been formed and I think the others were quite hard on her. That was difficult to watch, but she’s a strong cookie. She handled it well.’
Like Karen, Eunice found the trolling and social media pile-ons difficult to navigate. Arabella was slated when she picked contestant Danny Williams because the Love Island audience had become invested in his previous relationship with Yewande Biala.
‘Arabella got trolled because of that, and I have to say I found it terribly hard. People can say “don’t read it” but you can’t help yourself. I think I found it harder, as a mother, than Arabella herself would have done. It’s your flesh and blood. She got threats and you do find yourself worrying that they will be carried out.’
She did however find the Love Island production team to be supportive: ‘They were always on the end of the phone. I can’t speak for everyone, but my experience was very positive.’
A world away from Karen’s experience. And she warns that as a result she’d advise any prospective Love Islanders’ parents to think beyond the bikinis and the bling: ‘Don’t fall for the hype like we did.’
And if Karen’s younger daughter Tia wanted to go on Love Island some day? ‘Oh God. I’d want to say no, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? Once they are adults, you can’t stop them.’
‘It’s worse than sending them for their first day of school’
‘People say “don’t read it” but you can’t help yourself ’