Laura Whitmore isn’t ready to talk about Love Island just yet. And, for the record, the reports about the TV host securing a £1million deal for another two confirmed series are fraudulent. ‘I haven’t even thought about the next series to be honest,’ she explained over the phone to Grazia. 'I saw some stuff in the papers which isn't true. '
Laura reiterated that she needed some space from the show. 'I really enjoyed doing series 6 but it was very difficult. It had huge highs, huge lows,' she said in her affable Irish accent. ‘For a lot of people who worked on [Love Island], we all need a bit of time away from the show just to reflect and look after our own selves and self-care. It’s very soon to be talking about the summer at the moment because we just need time to ourselves.’
Self-care is profoundly important to Laura, who believes that everyone should ‘identify’ negative and positive ‘triggers’. ‘If I’m on my phone and I'm feeling quite negative, maybe I need to not be on my phone so much,’ she explained, adding that baths and yoga ‘reduces’ her anxiety. ‘Everyone reacts to things differently but just identifying in your own life, what works, seeing what doesn't, is as important for to you to talk about your own mental health.’
Laura, who partnered with JD on International Women’s Day (IWD) to talk about mental health, feels it’s integral that we talk openly, as ‘we all suffer different levels of depression and on different levels of happiness and different levels,’ she explains. ‘You don't have to be in the deepest, darkest depression.’
Sharing stories with other women, she says, can make you feel ‘less alone.’ That’s why IWD is so important for Laura and made working with JD, and it's In The Duffle Bag Season Two, a must. ‘It’s about a community or a tribe sharing thoughts which makes you feel part of something. When you talk about our good and bad mental health stuff, it makes you realise you’re not the only one feeling that way. It’s OK to talk; it doesn’t mean you’re crazy or abnormal in any way. In fact, it’s the opposite.’ IWD, Laura explained, is sadly still a necessary calendar fixture. ‘Every day should be Women's Day [but] sadly, because of history and, and so you look at the gender pay gap and the figures, you realise that we still need to have this day to mark, how far we've come but also as a day to mark how far we still need to go.’
Being a woman (with a hefty 1million Instagram followers) in a powerful and public job does have its challenges. However, Laura explains that she tunes out the trolls by ‘curating’ her newsfeed: she blocks or mutes ‘negative’ people and tries to not ‘take things personally.’ ‘What I’ve realised is that it's someone who has issues themselves and has a lot of negativity in their life, and they feel that they need to put on someone else to make themselves feel better.’
‘It’s something we all have to deal with whether you’re in the media, or not even in the workplace,’ she continued, adding that some of the people she ‘respects the most’ also get trolled. ‘I have no issue in calling people out… [but]I try not let things get to me.’
What makes the job easier, she explains, is working alongside her boyfriend Ian Stirling, who is Love Island's sparky narrator. ‘It’s nice to have somebody who understands this,’ she says, adding that she feels as though she ‘lives and breathes Love Island’ because everybody she meets wants to talk about the show. ‘It's nice to have a break and not talk about it, you know, for like, half an hour or an hour. Sometimes we'll go for dinner and not talk about Love Island.'
Despite working on the same show however, Laura and Ian saw little of each other because they were on different schedules. ‘We had separate rooms because we were on different times,’ she said. ‘He snuck into my room a few times, but I probably saw him more when we didn’t work together.’ When they were together though, Laura irked Ian because she sometimes let slip spoilers. ‘I knew who was dumped before he knew because he only watched the edited footage. So once I let it slip what was happening and he was like, Don't tell me''
Listen to JD In The Duffle Bag Podcast here
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