Zara Deniz may have left the villa, but she’s still the most interesting Love Island contestant in the series so far. The 25-year-old actor and model has been opening up about her time in the villa, and all of the unaired arguments we never got to see. Crucially, one of them explains a lot about why her and Tom came to their brutal end.
In an interview with On Demand Entertainment, Zara says that there was a lot we didn’t see when it came to her and Tom’s relationship. From planning trips to Dubai together to him accusing her of playing games, it seems they were a lot more serious than viewers were led to believe. Now, it makes perfect sense why she was so frustrated by the challenge where he was asked to create his ‘perfect girlfriend’ with three islanders – one for face, body then personality – and he chose Olivia Hawkins for the face.
‘Backstory, before that started, he actually came at me and accused me of things that were being stirred up in the villa,’ Zara explains. ‘I was going into that night such good vibes because we were solid all day, then just before the challenge he was really upset. I didn’t know this hadn’t made it to air because context wise it’s important, he basically came at me fuming.’
According to Zara, Tom accused her of talking to Shaq Muhammad to make him jealous. ‘It was hearsay, gossip and people’s opinions but he was taking it as fact,’ Zara says. ‘It was frustrating for me [that it didn’t air] because it was a lot of the context, we went into [the challenge] on rocky terms.’
Zara says she doesn’t think Tom had bad intentions picking Liv’s face, but he was worried he’d be called ‘boring’ if he chose Zara for everything which ‘showed his age’ because he was more worried about that than her feelings. Ultimately, that’s what led to their relationship breakdown and the big fight that saw Zara hilariously call Tom ‘community penis’.
Well, well well, if it isn’t reality TV show editing coming back to bite us once again – proving you can never truly know what’s going on behind the scenes when it comes to a show like this. At least Zara’s getting to air her side now, we just can’t wait for all the other gossip when more islanders leave the villa.