Laura Whitmore has revealed she “couldn’t” ask Love Island contestants “if they were ok” during her time in the villa.
The Irish presenter recently announced she was stepping down as host of the ITV2 series, three years after she took over from her late friend Caroline Flack.
During a new interview with The Sunday Times, the 37-year-old said she was limited when it came to interacting with the Islanders.
“When they were in the villa, sometimes I wanted to ask if they were OK and couldn’t,” she said. “But I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”
Laura also addressed the controversy that often surrounds the show, and said she found it “difficult” not being able to comment on certain things.
“It is hard,” she confessed.
“Your face is the front of the show but I am one tiny person and have no producing role so I couldn’t say if I didn’t think something was OK.”
“If your child is watching, maybe you should watch it with them and have a conversation. A friend watched with her daughter and told her that it is not OK to say certain things.
“I question things a lot, even if I don’t do it publicly, people would rather I didn’t. It’s difficult doing that when you work on the show.”
During the candid interview, the mother-of-one also discussed how tough it was to host the show for the first time in 2020.
Laura took over from Caroline Flack for the show’s first winter series in January 2020, after the presenter stepped down as host amid allegations she assaulted her then-boyfriend Lewis Burton.
Caroline was arrested over the alleged incident in December 2019, and two months later she was told that she would face trial for the alleged assault, despite the fact that Lewis didn’t want to press charges.
Hours after she found out that she would be facing a trial, Caroline tragically took her own life on February 15, 2020 at the age of 40.
Speaking about that time, Laura said: “I will always be grateful for how much support Caroline gave me.”
“The first year I did the show, I was surviving the trauma of losing someone and keeping it together and doing a live show.”
“That first series was one of the toughest things, a lot of it was survival.”
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