If spending your summer in a gorgeous villa in Mallorca, flirting with unreasonably attractive strangers and completing whimsical challenges for a chance to win £50,000 sounds like fun, then here is everything you need know about applying for Love Island 2019.
How can you apply for Love Island 2019?
Wannabe islanders can register their interest with ITV using this digital form by 30 April 2019. Once casting begins, you will be invited to fill out and submit a full application form.
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However, this is not the only way producers scout for their next contestants.
“We also cast our net far and wide by looking at social media profiles (Twitter and Instagram) as it’s always quite easy to gauge on there people who are popular, aren’t afraid to show themselves off and have a big following,” says Lewis Evans, a casting producer for the show, in an interview with Cosmopolitan. “We also attend events and hold street castings for prospective Islanders.”
What are producers looking for?
“The key is that they are over 18, single and looking for love,” says Evans - and to be noticed out of tens of thousands of applications, they also need to “stand out from the crowd”.
Potential contestants must be available for filming for at least eight weeks from May next year and have a valid passport from 1 May to 31 August, as well as any visas needed to travel to Europe. ITV employees and their immediate relatives or live-in partners are not allowed to apply.
Applicants face an audition process and numerous interviews, according to Cosmopolitan. “One of the main questions we ask, from the outset, is if they would choose love or money,” Evans says. “It’s always important to us that anyone coming onto the show is open to finding the girl or guy of their dreams.”
He adds: “It’s all about having a great mix of desirable, aspirational singletons who have interesting and engaging personalities to keep our viewers glued and entertained by what’s going on in the villa.”
Executive producer Tom Gould tells Radio Times: “You just have to look at people who, when they come into that room, engage us. Because we’re seeing so many people it’s actually quite hard to have that impact.
“So you want someone who’s going to come into the room and just command it, own it, make us want to ask them loads of questions and get to know more about them and their stories. We need to feel like ‘I want to see these guys in the villa’.”
Any more tips?
Love Island 2017 contestant Montana Brown has shared her advice for those who get through to the audition stage.
“Dress up glam, ladies and gentlemen. Get your winged eyeliner on point because you will be on camera and they'll be showing the execs so it's best to look your best on that special day,” she says.
To avoid blending in with the other thousands of auditionees, Brown suggests telling the producers specific anecdotes.
“Don’t just say ‘Oh I’m really fun’. Yeah, but why are you fun? Like what makes you fun, what makes you different?” she tells Capital FM.
If you do make it through, you’ll need to prepare for instant fame, she says: “I didn’t think anything was going to happen from it so my life really turned upside down; I went from a student living on a budget and suddenly I’ve got 1.2 million Instagram followers.”
