Sophie Monk, flaunting the ironic bombshell bogan persona on which she so endearingly trades in Andy Lee’s survey quiz show The Hundred, declares that this eighth season of Love Island Australia, has “hit its actual peak of brilliance”.
In the trailer, which rivals Sam Kekovich’s Australia Day lamb ads for its lavish parody of patriotism, our Sophie, the host since its inception, is tossed the keys to the US series’ villa in Fiji. Here, 10 young Australian “hotties” will this time try to fall in love, refrain from cheating and win over viewers for a $50,000 prize.
Announcing that the set “just needs a bit of Aussification”, Monk winks at two shirtless tradies hanging a Vegemite poster and cracks a MAGA gag from a pink inflatable in the pool. There is nothing not to love about Monk. But there are increasingly uncomfortable aspects to this raunchy matchmaking show.
For starters, the audience is getting younger.
“I’ve noticed that, now, it’s a lot of daughters and mums – they watch together,” says Monk. “Fourteen-year-olds are watching it. That’s the majority, I’d say, of people that come up to me with their mum, and they both want a photo. Because we all want love, don’t we?”
Monk’s joke in the trailer that “a few red flags have slipped in, but it’s too late now!” doesn’t seem so funny about 20 minutes into the first episode. Encouraged by Monk, the women take turns walking up to a man on a heart-shaped podium to perform a passionate kiss, before the man makes his selection. The camera zooms in as one man puts his hand around a woman’s throat, seemingly inferring the controversial “sex choking” trend.
Monk says she didn’t notice this during filming, and likens the spectacle to a party game.
“I’m definitely not perving!” says Monk. “I guess it’s just that age group where they do spin-the-bottle … I’m so protective of them all. I wish I had had a show like this when I was a teenager.”
Monk came of age on reality TV, with Popstars Australia in 2000, and a decade later, while continuing to forge an acting career at home and in the US, appearing on The Bachelorette and Celebrity Apprentice – so she well knows the perils of the game. She has not seen the Binge documentary The Curse of Love Island, which covers the deaths by suicide of four people associated with the original UK series, including host Caroline Flack, and airs the mortified reflections of former contestants.
She insists the Australian cast are in safer hands, even in the very villa where the previous US series was marred by allegations of racial slurs and bullying.
“It’s changed so much. When I started, no one knew how big [reality TV] was going to be. It was wild. There were zero rules. And when it was over, it was like, ‘Bye!’ ” she recalls. “We didn’t know what to do when the fame stopped. Now, there are psychologists for that. [This cast] is looked after through the show, before the show and after the show. I just wish that was around when I was younger.”
In the first episode, a British expat cast as a temptress waits in a “hideaway villa” to test the loyalties of paired-up male contestants, though Monk says there is no emotional manipulation on this series. “Producers were out to get you a bit more back then, and they’re not now. Love Island’s not that. We don’t need villains.”
Instead, Monk says there is a “psychological study” behind the bikini-clad glamour.
“It’s the conversation points,” she says. “Like Married At First Sight, people come away and discuss things. I know they’re in bathers, but once you pull all that away, within a day, you forget that they’re even hot, and you just learn so much by watching. Well, I do.”
Love Island Australia airs Monday-Thursday at 10am on 9Now; and 8.30pm on Nine (the owner of this masthead).
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