Amber Gill won Love Island with Greg O’Shea - but her greatest win was leaving the villa with a group of new best female friends. Watching from home, it was genuinely lovely to see the friendship formed between Amber, Yewande Biala and Anna Vakili. When Yewande left the villa, she even wrote an open letter for her friend Amber, begging her not to take Michael Griffiths back.
Now, the girls have collaborated for a podcast called Reality Check, which launched with Yahoo yesterday, where the stars answer questions which fans have sent them on Instagram. And it’s popular, the programme is already number 1 on iTunes.
‘I went in the villa, I didn't find love but I found my friends and it’s a form of love,’ Anna tells Grazia. ‘I feel like us three got on so well as we kept it really real in there.’ Obviously, what with the girls being on the UK’s biggest dating phenomenon, the girls - who all confirm they’re single - also dish out relationship advice on the podcast. ‘I feel like we have a lot to offer in terms of because we didn't take shit from the guys,’ she adds. ‘It's just basically fun advice, but at the same time just a chat between three really good friends.’
It’s impossible for the podcast not to have an under arching theme of friendship. ‘Friendships are going to be a big part of it, relationships, social media things like that,’ Amber tells us. ‘I feel like collectively we just went through so much in the villa and just want to give out some advice. I think I've watched previous series of Love Island, and they never really show girls together or like forming really good friendships, there's romance but there's never really girls backing each other.’
After doing countless interviews, and appearing on podcasts, Yewande says that they were inspired to start one themselves. ‘All I did was like podcasts and radio and interviews,’ she told us. ‘And I didn't know how much I liked it. I thought it was weird because I was thinking about it and I messaged Amber, and I said do you think it would be good for the three of us to do a podcast? And she was like wow I love the idea, and ever since then I've been onto the producers at Yahoo and finally we're here.'
Produced by Yahoo and distributed by Yahoo and Acast, Reality Check will be available to listen to on all major podcasters – includingiTunes, and Google - from 12 December.