Ariana Madix Wants Queer Couples On Love Island USA
"It is very much gendered. It is very binary."
The Love Island USA villa is an extremely heterosexual space, but Ariana Madix wants to hit it with a real bombshell. The host, who is bisexual, recently opened up about her dream of seeing a lasting queer relationship form on the dating show, revealing the truth about how production would handle such a twist.
Madix spoke about one issue she has with the culture in the villa during a June 4 interview with Cosmopolitan. “It is very much gendered. It is very binary. And I always feel like I'd love to see it break out of that,” Madix said. “I don't know how it will, but I'd love to see that.”
While the host pointed out a couple of same-sex relationships that briefly occurred on the show (naming Kassy Castillo and Johnnie Garcia from Season 5 and Megan Barton-Hanson and Kyra Green from Love Island Games), Madix emphasized her desire for an LGBTQ+ couple to really go the distance.
“I am dying for more queer representation on the show,” Madix said. “I think it would be really, really great, because I think that it's just a representation of real life. Queer representation is just representation.”
She added that islanders are not discouraged from exploring romantic relationships with anyone who catches their eye, regardless of gender. “Listen, there's no rules,” Madix said. “No producer is like, 'You can't.' So I think they would follow it if it happened, for sure. I would love to see it happen.”
While Castilla and Garcia remain the only same-sex pairing from the core USA franchise, there have been a few more examples overseas. Sophie Gradon and Katie Salmon made Love Island history as the first two women to couple up on Season 2 of the UK franchise, and Phoebe Thompson and Cassie Lansdell followed that up shortly afterwards on the second season of Love Island Australia.
Although the show does have a very gendered casting structure that encourages heterosexual relationships (eliminations usually serve to even out the number of men and women in the villa), Madix seems hopeful that Love Island USA can become a show that’s representative of all forms of love.
