Life After ‘Love Island:’ The Reality Hit Is Hollywood’s Hottest Talent Pipeline

Over the course of six weeks, reality TV sensation “Love Island USA” transforms its contestants into some of the biggest celebrities of the summer, with the buzziest characters cracking into the millions on their social media accounts by the time they leave the villa, whether or not they found love.

Take Season 8 winner Trinity Tatum, who came into the Peacock show as a former hardware store employee with just 5,000 followers. She quickly became a fan favorite on the dating show where strangers couple up to win money, and the first Islander to reach 1 million followers on Instagram. Since leaving the Villa, she has 3.6 million followers and counting, averaging over a million likes per post – showing just how engaged this fanbase can be. 

That’s why, as soon as the islanders exit the show, among the flood of DMs from family, friends and newfound fans are meeting requests from agents hoping to help craft what their next steps look like.

While a number of reality stars have managed to break into mainstream Hollywood stardom (some are even now in the White House), “Love Island USA” has proven to be a particularly powerful springboard for talent thanks to its massive reach. Season 8, which wrapped up in July but whose reunion episode airs Monday night, became the streamer’s most-watched original season ever with 19 billion minutes viewed. As a result, getting into business with the faces and personalities behind the ratings smash is the natural next step, not only due to their massive follower count, but because they have already shown proven star power.

“‘Love Island’ is … the show that has the biggest impact on taking somebody from obscurity to fandom,” Jamie Youngentob, a UTA unscripted agent, told TheWrap. “We used to see that more with ‘The Bachelor’ back in the day, with some of these Netflix shows, but now ‘Love Island’ has surpassed them all.”

That is, if the islanders — and their teams — make the right moves while the spotlight is still on them. The end result could be parlaying their 15 minutes of fame into a new career as a full-time creator with brand deals and commercials.

“It took me forever to create the dream team,” Season 7 islander Iris Kendall, who has leaned into the fashion and beauty space and signed with WME since leaving the villa, told TheWrap. “Now I’m surrounded by people who care about me and have the same vision as I do for my future … it was important for me to find people who aligned with the direction I wanted to position myself.”

TheWrap spoke to agents across top Hollywood and creator agencies, including CAA, WME, UTA, Gersh and DBA, about the strategic moves behind crafting the islanders’ next move.

Finding a star

By the time agents’ spidey senses are tingling about an islander, that contestant has already been through an intensive casting process that relies on a “collective gut feeling,” said Danielle Gervais, EVP of casting and talent for ITV America, which produces Love Island USA.

“Yes, of course they’re gorgeous, but they also have a brightness or some special quality that we just can’t stop talking about – whatever that ‘thing’ may be,” Gervais told TheWrap. “Sometimes we meet potential islanders who even polarize the [casting team], but if we’re still talking about that person long after we’ve met them, that’s usually a sign they could be great on the show.”

And while prominence is to be expected from a buzzy show like “Love Island USA,” Gervais revealed future ambitions aren’t proactively discussed during the casting process, unless it is something the islanders are pursuing prior to applying. The focus remains on making connections and falling in love.

“We actually remind people often throughout the casting process that being on this show does not necessarily mean they will become famous when the show is over. It does not necessarily mean they’ll be able to quit their jobs and become influencers,” Gervais said. “Fame is never a guarantee, and we don’t want people applying for the show with that as their goal.”

Most talent agents started watching “Love Island USA” alongside the rest of the country with its breakout Season 6, though Gersh head of digital Jade Sherman took special interest in the season thanks to new host Ariana Madix, who is represented by Gersh. She instantly saw the potential, likening the islanders to digital-first talent who have kept their followers apprised of their daily life via vlogs.

“You’re watching them go through this journey, and you feel connected to them,” Sherman told TheWrap. “I think that relationship between the audience and the talent is kind of what makes everything so special … it allows them to continue post-show.”

Agents can easily get a sense of which islanders audiences are gelling with through the show’s active social media community.

“Being able to just see audience reactions via social media and the live votes gives you almost an early insight into who they’re going to be following most closely after,” CAA TV agent Alix Haley, who runs point on Season 7 runner-up Nicolas Vansteenberghe’s team, told TheWrap. “You can just identify it off the screen right away … you can see them hosting, you can see them connecting with people far beyond this.”

WME digital agent Daniella Datnow, who also staffs Tatum’s team, saw the audience backing Kendall as Season 7 played out, as the pajama shorts she wore to bed sold out without her even mentioning the brand on the show.

“I’d watch them sell out in real time, and it kind of was a case study in and of itself of like ‘this is a girl that has real selling power,’” Datnow told TheWrap. “Just seeing her wear it, you want to be like her. She has that cool, girl-next-door attitude, style and relatability that I just instantly connected to.”

Building a brand

“Love Island” stars have extended their reach beyond Peacock to “Dancing With the Stars” and even the pared-down Vanity Fair Oscars Party list (Season 7 star Olandria Carthen received an invite).

For the agents and teams representing “Love Island” talent, they said there isn’t a strict playbook for success beyond the show. Relevancy and retention completely depends on the individual’s relationship to their own audience.

“There’s no ‘Love Island’ starter pack,” CAA digital agent Arleta Fowler, who runs point for Season 6 alum Serena Paige, told TheWrap. “Every single thing … is completely bespoke to them, and it is that combination of that special quality, their aspirations, and then areas that we think strategically they could lean into.”

The talent’s teams, often composed of both creator and unscripted agents, tailor their strategy to the Islanders’ interests. UTA partner and creators agent Mahzad Babayan told TheWrap that their new client, Season 8 winner Bryce Alakai, came in with a specific vision for his career as a DJ that they were able to put into practice within his first month as a client. He sold out several stops of his tour just weeks after leaving the Villa.

But while Alakai had been DJing prior to “Love Island,” Vansteenberghe was new to the music scene but had a love for EDM. His team set him up to interview some of his favorite artists to see what might be his way into the community, and from there he met Carter Gregory, who eventually signed him as an artist.

Sometimes it’s as simple as finding a throughline that connects the islander’s previous passions to their post-villa world, like Season 6 finalist JaNa Craig, whose team at Gersh leaned into her background as a day trader for finance-centered ad campaigns.

UTA also represents “Love Island” alum Leah Kateb from Season 6. The breakout star made a name for herself on the show with her vintage designer looks and quippy personality. Agents from UTA outlined how they were able to leverage her interests in fragrance to secure not just a brand partnership but an executive position at the perfume company Skylar as “re-founder” and chief creative officer.

Meshing the reality and digital worlds

Season 8 breakout Tatum did not do content creation for a living and quit her job at a hardware store before joining the dating competition series.

However, her personality, staunch loyalty to her friends and dedicated relationship with Bryce made fans fall in love with her. Tatum even scored a Cosmopolitan cover with her partner and a brand partnership with Verizon.

And Tatum is just one of many. Several of the Islanders, specifically the final four women deemed the Core Four by fans online, have created platforms nearly overnight, scoring magazine covers and brand deals all before the Season 8 reunion special even airs.

“The level of social conversation around the show instantly propels the talent into something that is much more similar to a creator than to a traditional reality star,” UTA’s Youngentob told TheWrap. “There’s such an intense level of emotional investment from the fandom … It can be a little bit more intimidating, but it’s also really really powerful from a content and commerce standpoint because we just encourage our talent to just be you.”

For talent like Trinity, coming out of the Villa requires a level of education on the content space and an understanding of what to do with an increased interest in your personal life. Creator divisions of agencies specifically work with talent to develop their point of view and curate partnerships that will set the talent apart.

Vanessa Flaherty, president of talent at Digital Brand Architects, said that’s where managers come in. She advised that growing a following “overnight does not necessarily equate to success because there has to be a thoughtful content strategy.”

UTA’s Babayan said that the most important lesson that they teach talent coming off of the show is the value of no. “When you’re coming out of the show, it’s not about how many brand deals you can do,” Babayan said. “It’s about using the cultural moment of the show and what they’re known for, and then to create something that’s really special that has longevity.”

Along the way, WME’s digital agent Mikayla Starrels, who is also on Tatum’s team, remembers the islanders weren’t there to see the love pouring out for them during the show’s airing, and “don’t yet have an understanding of the parts of them that resonated so well.

“[We’re there to] help them navigate and point to the things that we were watching in real time to say, ‘Hey, people really loved when you talked about this, and we know that’s meaningful to you,’ and helping them figure out how to use all those bits and pieces of themselves that are so authentically them and translate those in the business sense,” she said.

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