Love Island's Laura Whitmore Leaves After Two Years: 'i Hope I Did You Proud, Caroline Flack'

Love Island’s Laura Whitmore Leaves After Two Years: ‘i Hope I Did You Proud, Caroline Flack’

Love Island’s Laura Whitmore Leaves After Two Years: ‘i Hope I Did You Proud, Caroline Flack’

Laura Whitmore has announced that she will be leaving Love Island at the end of this season.

In 2020, she will take over as host of ITV2’s dating show to replace the late Caroline Flack, who died in 2019.

However, she has confirmed that she will not be returning for a fourth stint as a host of the show or its sister series, Love Island Aftersun, any time in the near future.

According to a statement shared on Instagram, Laura – whose husband Iain Stirling narrates the show – explained: “We have some exciting news to share with you! It has been decided that I will not be hosting the next series of Love Island.

There are certain aspects of the show that I have found very difficult that cannot be changed due to the format of the show, including the fact that I have to fly back and forth between South Africa and my new conflicting projects.

In addition, she added that she wished it was still possible, but she knew you were in good hands. The original plan was for me to fill in for Caroline for a series, but it ended up turning into 3 series.

Caroline, I hope I did you proud with what I did for you.

Love Island’s Laura Whitmore Leaves After Two Years: ‘i Hope I Did You Proud, Caroline Flack’

A spokesperson for ITV confirmed the news as well, stating in a statement that Laura has been a fantastic host across the last three series of the show.

We are grateful for everything she has brought to the program, but respect and understand her decision, and we look forward to working with her on upcoming ITV projects in the future.

In addition, it comes just weeks after Laura, 37, ended the most recent series of Love Island, which aired for eight weeks and was won by Ekin-Su Culculoglu and Davide Sanclimenti, taking home a £50,000 prize.

In the meantime, she is currently in rehearsals for her role in the West End production of 2:22 A Ghost Story, which premieres on September 6.

After Love Island’s longtime host Flack faced legal issues in 2019, the TV personality was chosen to replace him as the new host of the show.

After that, Laura presented the first winter series of Love Island in January 2020, which was aired on ITV.

It was in February of that year that Flack committed suicide at the age of 40.

At the time of announcing her new gig, Laura said at the time: ‘To say I’m excited to be heading to Cape Town to host Love Island, which is one of the biggest shows on television, would be an understatement.

As the show’s host, I would like to thank ITV for the trust it has placed in me to manage such a huge show.

My only wish is that it was under better circumstances; Caroline is a great host as well as a friend of mine.

I have spoken to her a lot over the last few days since she stepped down from her position.

In addition to being kind to me, she has strongly pushed me toward this role in a very positive way.

In the past, I have watched her host every series, so I know I have big shoes to fill in the future. Hopefully, I will be able to do it justice.’

As she put it: “Above all, I am a huge fan of this show and I am a huge fan of the cast. It has been over a year since I have been to a Love Island villa and I can’t wait to get inside and meet all the new Islanders looking for love.

There is no doubt that the Love Island team is one of the best in the business… including the voice and soul of the show, Iain Stewart. He thought he was getting a holiday away from me… not a chance!’

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Laura detailed how exhausting it can be to host the popular series and to face scrutiny from the public.

As she explained on the Distraction Pieces Podcast with Scroobius Pip, it’s still something that I’m working through myself privately,’ she said.

The thing is, I had to also think about it from the perspective of my own mental health, because I love the show, however, it comes with a lot of baggage.

The host only appears three or four times a week, and that’s always been the way, yet it’s always the one that gets the most attention. It’s a bit exhausting and it’s tough at times, she continued.

She gave birth to her first child with husband Iain in spring 2021 and was open about the challenges she faced in juggling being a new mum with returning to work on the summer series as a result.

As a child, I remember getting mastitis on my breasts. She recalled that the day we were doing the first show of the coupling up, I was diagnosed with mastitis and had a fever,’ she recalled earlier this year.

It was as if I had great big hard boobs, one of them bigger than the other. On the other hand, it kind of took away some of the pressure, as there were other things I had to worry about rather than the show part of it.

However, I have to admit that it was a challenge. There was a lot of work involved and it was very demanding because you are trying to balance everything.’

While Laura’s time on Love Island was not always smooth sailing, she received criticism during the 2021 summer series when she failed to interview Kaz Kamwi and Tyler Cruickshank on the sofa at the reunion as other couples did.

In the course of this year, the TV star has been subjected to numerous complaints from Ofcom due to her comments about Ekin-Su on Aftersun.

As a result, she was defended by ITV in a statement that said: “Laura is the presenter of the show, and part of her role includes asking questions to the panel and discussing what is happening in the villa.”

Despite the fact that we do not condone the trolling of our host or our Islanders, we do not condone any escalation of these comments.

The backlash that Laura faced over the weekend came as a result of her mocking Tasha Ghouri, who appeared in the most recent series of the show, for not knowing how rose wine is made.

In a sense, Laura has completely wiped the slate clean on her career, not only is she branching out into acting, but she has also announced last month that she will be leaving her BBC Radio 5 Live show after 4 years as well.

As yet, we are not aware who will replace Laura on ITV’s Love Island, but there is no doubt ITV producers are working hard as the popular dating show is set to return to screens early next year for another winter edition before its staple summer series starts airing from June.

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