Photo: Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images
This summer, Love Island USA invited two new bombshells to the villa, as Summer House’s Ciara Miller and TikToker (and The Cut’s own advice columnist) Tefi Pessoa took the reins of the postshow recap series, Aftersun. While the hosts have had no problem winning fans over with insanely hot styling and enough charisma to power all the neon signs in Fiji, some extremely online viewers have taken issue with their nuanced takes about the Islanders’ behavior — more recently, that they’ve been too sympathetic to the guys. On Thursday, however, Miller told People that they’re “trying to see both sides and listen, we’re not male apologists.” To this, Pessoa said quickly, “No.”
“Production has to remind us to be semi-neutral and to not gang up on the guys,” Miller added. “So we’re doing our best.”
One major pain point in the women’s hosting tenure came from the dramatic Casa Amor recoupling last week. As viewers will recall (and also cry in agony), Aniya chose not to recouple with fan favorite Carl in hopes of remaining in her couple with KC. But when KC walked back in the villa, he had Casa girl Tierra on his arm. While recapping all the drama on Aftersun, both Miller and Pessoa expressed that they empathized with Aniya and that KC had not considered her feelings as respectfully as possible. But they also noted in KC’s defense that he had told Aniya multiple times he was hoping to explore other connections, and Aniya squandered an opportunity to couple up with someone who was all in on her. Love Island has an extremely passionate online fan base, and some viewers — who’ve tended to categorize Aniya as good and KC as bad — were not happy with this stance.
“Every [episode] we are called too biased and then too unbiased, that we support the women too much and then we are too hard on them,” Pessoa posted on Threads. “Then we are inundated with being male-centered and then man-haters. we cannot please everyone because we are human. thank you for watching!”
“You guys need to fucking relax. We film for 6 hours. Perspectives get left on the cutting room floor,” Miller added on her own Threads account. “I could psychoanalyze all of LI for hours and write a dissertation on black people/colorism on reality TV. Don’t talk to me about how I ‘fail’ to see any person of color’s perspective or how I need more ‘empathy.’ I’ve quite literally lived it.”
While speaking to People, Pessoa reminded fans that their job is to “humanize these people.” “At the end of the day, that is someone’s son, that’s someone’s baby, that’s someone’s brother [or] cousin.” Besides, Miller noted, “They’re 20 something years old … They don’t have the best communication skills.”
At least from my perspective, Miller and Pessoa have more than earned their place on the show, and it’s been very fun watching them film TikToks in their hotel rooms and frolic on the gorgeous beaches of Fiji. I have only one request: Next season, take me with you, I’m begging!
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