Love Island USA season 7’s Yulissa Escobar, who was removed from the show after clips from a previous podcast appearance resurfaced of her using racially insensitive language, has been the major casting news of the season, but she isn’t the only issue production has faced. When the Love Island USA season 7 cast announcement dropped, viewers took their time sifting through the new group of Islanders to see who they’d be investing in as the season got underway. While there were some issues with various cast members, Yulissa’s behavior during a past podcast appearance became a glaring issue for viewers.
While Love Island USA is no stranger to controversy, it became clear that the series wasn’t going to hear the end of things when it came to viewers’ insistence on Yulissa being removed from the villa. With the political landscape more divisive than ever in the US, viewers have become more openly concerned with the beliefs and behaviors of public figures, and Love Island USA cast members are given a platform many felt Yulissa wasn’t deserving of. After calling for her removal, it came out that Yulissa was removed from the series, but the work for production has only begun.
Love Island USA Removed Yulissa After Racial Insensitivity
She’s Offered A Tense Apology
As Love Island USA season 7’s cast members were revealed and researched, viewers quickly became aware of Yulissa’s poor past behavior. During a podcast appearance, Yulissa used racially insensitive language repeatedly, making it clear that she wasn’t concerned with coming off inappropriate. While Yulissa wasn’t removed from Love Island USA until the second day of the season, there was no question why the show chose to remove her after the backlash from fans pointing out her indiscretion. The show made the right move in removing Yulissa, and made it clear that her behavior wasn’t something the producers or cast supported.
After Yulissa was removed from the series, she chose to make a public apology on her Instagram, sharing that she was “owrning my mistakes” and “speaking my truth” in a post with a lengthy caption. Unfortunately for Yulissa, her apology spends a lot of time talking about how she was unaware of the origins and impact of the racially insensitive word she used during the podcast, and very little time apologizing for her actions. With a short, “to those who are disappointed or offended, I understand and I apologize,” at the end of her statement, Yulissa’s apology lacked necessary remorse.
Rather than offering a genuine apology, Yulissa decided to apologize in a roundabout way, not offering real remorse for her actions, but apologizing to those who felt hurt or offended by them. By not acknowledging that she’d truly done something wrong generally, not just to a select group, Yulissa appears to be standing by her actions, even in a minor way. Yulissa sharing her apology in a roundabout way made it easier for others to poke holes in her statement. Instead of owning up to what she did and explaining that it was wrong overall, Yulissa tried to save herself.
Love Island USA’s Getting Flack For Other Cast Members’ Online Behavior
While Yulissa has been one of the major problems with the Love Island USA season 7 cast, the show has also been getting flack for choosing to cast Austin Shepard, one of the original Islanders. Austin, who shockingly paired up quickly with Chelley Bissainthe, came off as a fairly standard Islander at first, but after going through his social media, it became clear that wasn’t as socially flexible as other Islanders, and had liked some hateful content toward minority groups on his profiles. While Austin’s politics weren’t part of his casting, the content he’d liked should’ve been a red flag.
Some have debated over how far is too far to go when looking into cast members for a series, especially with the divisive political climate in the US. While ousting cast members for their support of political figures isn’t necessarily the right move, vetting those cast members to understand where their beliefs lie is important. As this is a longer, more in-depth process, it can become tough for casting teams to implement processes that are both efficient and thorough. Still, with cast members like Austin coming in with a history of liking hate-fueled content, processes need to be in place.
Love Island USA Has To Protect Its Cast Members
Islanders Shouldn’t Be Put In A Position To Have To Disavow Others After The Show
As a show that casts a genuinely diverse group of Islanders, Love Island USA needs to work hard to protect the minority groups they bring into the mix. To be clear, Love Island USA should always be protecting all of its cast members to the best of their abilities, but this is meant to shed light on the ways that the casting process fails to vet the Islanders, leaving other cast members vulnerable. As there’s no way to personally vet someone while the Islanders build bonds on Love Island USA, the cast are expecting producers to do their due diligence.
There are typically cast members of color who find themselves faced with the past behavior of those they’ve matched up with on Love Island USA, and in some cases, having to reconcile someone they feel they know with their past, which has been attached to hateful behavior or ignorant statements. The Love Island USA cast members should be able to feel comfortable with their fellow Islanders in order to make meaningful connections, which means in casting, producers need to weed out those who have explicitly shared or followed along with hateful, inappropriate, or uncomfortable content online.
While this isn’t easy, it’s something that the casting teams behind reality TV shows like Love Island USA need to start doing. After years of shows having to explain their casts’ past behavior after the fact when their social media use or internet personas became publicized from fan research, reality TV shows like Love Island USA have to start doing the work themselves to avoid more fallout. With cast members like Austin, who has blatantly supported and liked racist content online, are matched up with a person of color like Chelley, it puts her in a difficult, vulnerable position that never needed to exist.
Love Island USA’s Production Team Needs To Do Better
Their Vetting Processes Need To Be Stricter
While the Love Island USA production team did a great job swiftly removing Yulissa from the villa after learning about her past behavior, the show could’ve done even better by not casting her in the first place. With other cast members like Austin in the villa, it’s clear that the show needs to do better for its cast members. Keeping the cast safe and able to trust in one another is important, and Love Island USA has the resources available to do research about their Islanders ahead of time. Love Island USA can and should have better, more thorough processes.
Love Island USA airs new episodes on Peacock at 9 p.m. EDT daily, except Wednesdays.
Sources: Yulissa Escobar/Instagram, Love Island USA/Instagram