The 29-year-old Rachel Finni was the first-ever Black woman to enter the show. Highlighting that it has already had seven seasons so far and no Black woman, she was allegedly put on the show by the producers to not get backlash for lack of diversity.
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Love’s a game
She opened up about the ITV dating show and confessed that every aspect of the show is fixed, including who wins it. According to her, she felt undesired on the show amongst fellow white contestants who admitted that they are not attracted to black women. She added that the producers were just checking the boxes for diversity that actually valuing them as individuals and said:
They put me in at that time and gave me that entrance because they thought: ‘OK, this is going to shut people up’.
They didn’t give me a story because they were just ticking boxes. They only care about ticking boxes.
Clarifying that she was not bitter about her early exit from the show, she claimed that one of the staff at the ITV show only told her about this. She told The Independent:
I got told by people that work at ITV that I got put in at that time because there was so much backlash on the outside for a lack of diversity.
I was a pawn to production whether they will take ownership of that or not.
Finally, stop having only one Black woman in the original line-up and another in at Casa Amor. It’s embarrassing that I was the first Black woman to walk into the villa as a bombshell when it’s on its seventh series.
Fixed it
Criticising the ITV dating show for not putting in an actual effort to diversify the show, she admitted that Love Islandonly casts people of races that have proven to be desirable in the past. Recalling about the time that when was asked who was her type amongst the boys, she chose Chuggs and Brad after being on hold for an entire month. Rachel then went on to say:
I'd been there a month, but the people who were interested in them got flown in two weeks before. They knew what they were doing. The show is controlled, every aspect of it is controlled.
Everything is set up, it's all set up
Finni also accused the Islanders of bullying her and ITV for not airing it on TV for obvious reasons.
Read more:
⋙ Rachel Finni speaks out after Love Island dumping
⋙ Rachel Finni reveals who she really wanted to couple up with
