Here's What Lillie From Love Island Is Doing After The Show
"Love Island" U.K. has been nothing short of a cultural sensation. Per Cosmopolitan, the seventh season, or series, as the Brits like to call it, premiered in June 2021, bringing with it another group of 12 sexy singletons to watch as they try to find love on the island of Mallorca in Spain (via the BBC).
Similar to other reality TV dating shows, the object of "Love Island" is to find someone to couple up with and then to gain enough favor with the audience that they vote to keep you on the island throughout the duration of the show.
Since the show's explosion in popularity, "Love Island" U.K. has been parodied by "Saturday Night Live" (via PopSugar) and even inspired its own U.S. version, per The Hollywood Reporter. That being said, the U.K. version of "Love Island" is considered vastly superior to its U.S. counterpart by many fans, who are likely counting down the days until the debut of Season 8 (via CNN).
Like any other reality show, viewers become very invested in its contestants, following their journey throughout the season and even after the cameras stop rolling. "Love Island" U.K. Season 7 star Lillie Haynes is no exception. But what has Haynes been up to following her stint on the show?
Lillie Haynes has been linked to a famous soccer player
Per Metro, Lillie Haynes is a 23-year-old trainee accountant from the U.K. coastal town, South Shields. "I liked the sound of finance and accountancy. My colleagues would describe me as a lovable headache. I'm very loud, I've always got a new story to tell in the office," Haynes said while on the show.
During her time in the famous villa, Haynes faced some serious viewer backlash after it was revealed that she had a fling with her fellow "Love Island" contestant, Liam Reardon, who was already involved with the eventual winner, Millie Court. As The Daily Mail reported, some fans got carried away with hating on Haynes, and her family took to Instagram to ask the haters to back off.
"Only one person has behaved badly towards Millie and it most definitely was NOT Lillie," the family's statement read. "The truth will always come out ... and probably sooner than you think ... think hard before typing and who you direct any hate towards."
Since the series wrapped, Haynes has continued to regularly update her fans on her Instagram account, which boasts an impressive 160,000 followers at the time of writing. Meanwhile, the former "Love Island" star also found herself in another fandom's crosshairs, when England soccer star Jack Grealish, who is already in a relationship with his childhood sweetheart, liked and then unliked a series of her Instagram photos (via Capital FM).