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Laura Whitmore Shares Reasons She Quit As Love Island Host
29 December 2022, 10:43
Laura Whitmore said she would have continued working on Love Island under different conditions.
Maya Jama will take over as Love Island’s host in series nine after Laura Whitmore stepped down in the summer.
Four months after she quit, Laura is speaking out about her reasons for her departure, admitting she would have stayed on had the conditions been different.
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In her statement announcing her departure, Laura admitted there were elements of the show she ‘found very difficult that cannot be changed’ and in a new interview she’s expanding on her reasons for leaving.
“It’s a show I love watching, but I guess when you work on it, you can’t speak about it,” she told Psychologies magazine.
“There was only so much I can do as a host – I couldn’t support them or not support them. I couldn’t say anything,” she went on.
“So you kind of have to go quiet, and that was hard for me because I like to be able to have those conversations.”
Laura added that she would have stayed in the job had she been able to do things the way she wanted.
She went on: “If I could [have done] things the way I wanted to, I’d probably still be doing it.
“But it’s a heavily-formatted show and I found my role within that tricky at times. It’s an entertainment show and there just wasn’t really any space for me to be more than that.”
When Laura announced her departure from the series she said there had been elements of the show she found ‘difficult’, referring to the format and also the tiresome schedule which would have included flying back and forth to South Africa in series nine.
She added she’d only ever planned on ‘filling in’ for original host Caroline Flack – who died in February 2020 – for one series, but ended up staying longer.
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