Inside Love Island’s ‘test-run week’ – TV villa rejects offered £100 daily fee

Love Island winner Jess Hayes has spoken exclusively to Daily Star reporter Carly Hacon about her time in the villa and opened up about the secret test run week during a Facebook Live interview.

Jess was part of the test week that sees rejected contestants spend seven days in the villa to allow producers to get a hang of the process before the show kicks off.

Jess explained the process: “I was actually in talks with MTV before, they wanted me to go on Ex on the Beach, but I didn’t end up doing that. I’m obviously glad that I didn’t! I went through the process, auditions and stuff, then I got a call: ‘You didn’t get your place on the show, but we’re doing a try-run,’ type of thing.”

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She continued: “Basically, you get paid £100 a day and it’s like a test. The same thing, you’re being filmed – I guess it’s a little test for the producers as well, to make sure everything is working and all that.

"I thought: ‘Why not?’ I was 22, I was like: ‘Yeah, I’ll go and have some fun, get paid and just enjoy myself’.”

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She explained that it was “like the real thing” and that “some people developed friendships,” and Jess even “got friendly with a guy in there”.

Suddenly, she received a text that brought her back down to earth.

“I remember we had to text things as well. I remember I got a text: ‘Jess, you’ve been voted out,’ and I was absolutely seething!”

A fuming Jess went on: “I went into the little cabins, I came out and I was like: ‘Why did you take me out? I was enjoying myself,’ then the executive producers sat me down and said: ‘We’re taking you out because we love you and we want you on the real thing’.”

The producers told her that they were taking her out of the test run because they “wanted her on the show,” which left Jess shocked and excited.

She called the move “crazy” and the producers explained that Jess was “such a big character” that they couldn’t leave her out of the real thing.

Jess gushed that the bosses “loved her” and took it as a “big compliment”.

“I was quite close to the producers, I’m still friendly with them now. I was close with a couple of them and we drove to my hotel. I had to call my mum.”

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Jess rang her mum and explained that she wasn’t coming home and would see her “in about six weeks”.

She explained that the “worst thing was” that she had to go “into the lockdown process” and was looked after “by a chaperone”.

They then took her phone off her and she had “only packed for a week,” which meant that the former winner “didn’t have enough stuff”.

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