It’s Ace Greene & Chelley Bissainthe Against The World

Ace Greene and Chelley Bissainthe are a package deal. When we meet in the back room of Patent Pending, a speakeasy hidden behind a coffee shop in NoMad, Manhattan, they huddle together in the booth like no one else is in the room, catching up on their day in between poses for our photoshoot. It’s a jam-packed week for the Love Island USA couple: They flew in from Los Angeles, spent the day (and late into the night) filming the Season 7 reunion, and now face a full press schedule before boarding another flight in 48 hours.

Over margaritas, guacamole, and tacos, we settle in to talk about the whirlwind of their current lives. Since leaving Fiji in mid-July when they were voted off Love Island, they’ve been spending time together in L.A. and (mostly) staying offline. “We took a major break from social media because we wanted to focus on the task at hand, which is building our relationship outside of the villa,” says Greene, a 23-year-old content creator from Los Angeles. Bissainthe, a 27-year-old day trader from Florida, has been taking the reins on cooking breakfast, putting her own spin on the elaborate morning meals Greene would cook for her in Fiji. Her go-to: blueberry waffles with fruit, eggs, bacon, sausage, and avocado.

They also come home to a new reality as pop culture icons. Season 7 became Peacock’s most-watched original TV season of all time, and its stars have become overnight celebrities. “Privacy is not a real thing anymore,” Bissainthe says. “The smallest things are becoming the biggest things. You could like a comment, unfollow somebody, or go to the store looking crazy, and in two seconds, it’s going to be on the Internet.” She can’t go to Chipotle by herself anymore — and even for this interview, we’ve booked the bar before it opens to minimize interruptions.

With a collective 4.1 million Instagram followers and 3.5 million TikTok followers between them — better known to fans as “Chellace” — they’re both still adjusting to the attention. “Just the other day, for my birthday, we were walking into our hotel,” Greene says. “One of the managers started hyperventilating, saying, ‘I love you guys so much.’” Bissainthe chimes in, “We definitely appreciated it. But it was also like, ‘Wow. This is how people feel about us.’ I think that’s a testament to our character and how we represented ourselves in the show.”

Everyone understands there’s a whole process to get into Love Island ... So the fact that we were both there at the same time was insane.

The duo fell in love on camera, but their story actually started a year earlier on a normal night out in New York. On Greene’s birthday last August, he met Bissainthe outside of Republica nightclub in upper Manhattan. “We spoke for a bit and exchanged social media, and from there, he would comment on my stuff and I’d comment on his,” Bissainthe says. “That was pretty much it.” Greene remembers it as flirting — “I would drop a heart eye on her, but it was on the lowest key” — but Bissainthe didn’t clock it as anything other than friendly. “Flirting to me is like, we’re having conversations. You’re probably saying some slick stuff,” she says. “But my friends send me heart eyes, and sometimes the fire emoji could be a friend thing too. I didn’t think it was anything crazy.”

They were living across the country from one another, and had it not been for Love Island, their banter might have died out like any other sporadic Internet flirtation. Both were approached by producers via DM. “I thought it was a scam at first,” Bissainthe laughs. She went through casting for Season 6 but wasn’t chosen, so she put it on her vision board to make it on Season 7. Greene wasn’t so sure he wanted to do it. “I was like, ‘Yo, honestly, this is not my thing. The kissing, the 24/7 filming, that’s a lot for me to take on,’” he says. He was already a content creator with almost 800,000 followers, and he’d built a successful life in L.A. “I was happy,” he says. “I had pretty much everything I needed. My family was taken care of, and the only thing that was missing was a person I could enjoy my moments with. That’s why I decided to go on the show.”

Both were cast as OG islanders, and Bissainthe was shocked to see Greene walk into the villa on Day One. “I was like, ‘I know that man; he looks so familiar. Am I tripping right now?’” In hindsight, she views their reunion as divine timing. “Everyone understands there’s a whole process to get into Love Island. You don’t just say, ‘Hey, I’m going to show up in Fiji; put me in the villa.’ You have to go through numerous interviews, and they have to see something in you. So the fact that we were both there at the same time was insane.”

Despite that serendipity, both wanted to take their time making other connections in the villa. “We could have easily coupled up right then and there, but we wanted to really get to know everybody on the island,” Greene says. He embarked on a brief and ill-fated connection with Amaya Espinal, while Bissainthe explored potential romances with Austin Shephard and Chris Seeley. “Maybe a lot of viewers saw our chemistry right away, but for us, it was just like, ‘OK, we definitely know something is there, but let’s really feel each other out,’” Bissainthe says. Once they recoupled officially after Casa Amor, the duo was locked in on each other, eventually becoming exclusive. “Through his creative date ideas and really being intentional, he definitely won me over.” Then, following a pattern this season that’s been dubbed “the closed-off curse,” they were eliminated right before the season finale.

We had therapists making videos saying we had the voice of cult leaders. I’m like, ‘Wait, did you watch what I lived?’

Bissainthe and Greene’s ousting came as a shock to viewers, and they say it surprised them, too — but it was also somewhat of a relief. “It gets super, super tough mentally being in there, and she was the person who helped me through all that time,” Greene says. “Once we closed things off, that’s when I felt like, ‘All right, I got what I came here for.’ I was ready to go home with her at that moment in time. I was good.”

Re-entering the real world brought on a new slew of challenges. Greene received criticism from viewers who perceived him as the “ringleader” of the group — a narrative cosigned by other islanders. “Coming out of the villa to see this narrative that I was in it for the money and clout and fame, it was just like, ‘Damn, this is disheartening to see,’” he says. “I really did have genuine intentions coming into this thing, because for me, I had everything to lose.” That online hate fed over into Bissainthe’s life, too. “We had therapists making videos saying we had the voice of cult leaders,” she says. “I’m like, ‘Wait, did you watch what I lived? Because I’m confused. How did you come up with that conclusion?’”

It was the pointed comments from their former castmates that hurt the most. “We all planned to spend time together outside the villa. To come out and have that be a different side of the coin, it’s tough to deal with,” Greene says. “We speak about being family,” Bissainthe adds. “I would have thought we would have had each other’s backs like it.”

One person Greene was eager to address at the reunion was Jeremiah Brown, who was voted out in Episode 18 by the male islanders and said later that Greene was “so obsessed” with how he was moving in the villa. “I wanted him to understand, ‘Yo bro, this is a show at the end of the day. I’m not the only one responsible for sending you home,’” Greene says. “It was good for him to see where I was coming from, and I could understand him on certain things.” Greene admitted at the reunion that he regretted his part in Brown’s elimination.

Other people may have come out from the show trying to build off the momentum and attention. For us, it wasn’t about that.

Then there was the infamous heart rate challenge drama with Huda Mustafa in Episode 24, which was brought back up at the reunion when an extended clip was shown to the cast. Greene says he spoke to Mustafa about his feelings on the situation, though it wasn’t shown in the final edit. “It was important to me to have a conversation with Huda about boundaries, stating where I stand with Chelley. I’ve always wanted Chelley,” he says. “It’s been important to me to clear the air with that.”

Bissainthe also talked things out with Mustafa at the reunion. She’s frustrated that her most emotional moment on the show — feeling disrespected by Mustafa in the challenge, and not wanting to speak to her right away — garnered so much criticism from viewers. “Everyone kept saying, ‘Oh, she’s just acting too poised and not showing her true self,’” she says. “But the moment I did express myself — and that was probably the max energy anybody will ever get out of me, because I’m not this crashout person who yells and curses — made people feel like ‘Oh, she’s such a mean girl.’” She believes other non-Black castmates were given more leeway by viewers to be messy. “How am I a mean girl, but not people who called other people names or made them feel uncomfortable in so many different ways? It doesn’t make sense.”

Bissainthe says she and Mustafa are no longer friends, and it’s a situation she’s made peace with. “Unfortunately, we just don’t see eye to eye on things, and that’s perfectly OK. We’re very different people,” she says. “She has her people that are her friends, and I love that for her. And I have my people that are my friends. It’s just better that way, honestly.”

Next up, Bissainthe is planning a move out to L.A. full time, and she hints at some upcoming opportunities for her and Greene to interact with fans of the show. “I really want to show everyone how thankful we are for their support,” she says. But don’t expect to see the couple on a Beyond the Villa spinoff next year. “Respectfully, hell no. I couldn’t do it,” Greene responds immediately when I ask. Bissainthe is more ambivalent. “I don’t know. That’s my truest answer.”

For now, Chellace would rather do their own thing. “We didn’t come out looking for clout or fame,” Greene says. “I feel like other people may have come out from the show trying to build off the momentum and attention. For us, it wasn’t about that. We genuinely came on to find love.”