Love Island 2021 is expected to have its first ever disabled contestant after producers have reached out to influencers with visible disabilities and invited them to take part in the show, according to reports.
Producers of the ITV2 match-making show have reportedly been trying to recruit influencers with disabilities including para-athlete Milly Pickles, 26, whose leg was amputated after she was electrocuted.
Milly is a Gymshark and Freetrain athlete with almost 25k followers on Instagram.
A source revealed to The Sun: "Casting are actively approaching for someone who visibly has a disability.
"It’s all part of the show trying to be as diverse as possible.
"The final line-up hasn’t been sorted yet but it would be ideal if they had at least one disabled islander."
This comes after the villa dating show has attracted criticism in the past following accusations it does not celebrate enough diversity in contestants – such as with ethnicities, body types and types of relationships other than heterosexual ones.
Earlier this year, we reported that Love Island bosses were hoping to boost diversity on the show and had been thought to seek out a number of bisexual contestants.
Niall Aslam, 25, revealed he had autism after entering the villa in 2018 but he left the show shortly afterwards as he experienced psychosis and hallucinations, needing psychiatric treatment in hospital.
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He explained on TikTok: "Before Love Island I was a normal social work student in Coventry, and call me naive but I used to think the show was all as it seemed.
"As some of you may know, I have autism spectrum disorder – that the show were aware of because they get your whole medical record.
"This might explain why I thought the show was all as it seems as I'm quite a literal thinker.
"When I got there, there were loads of little things that I didn't see coming; I thought you could just chat to whoever you want but it was all very set up in ways of like: 'Don't talk to her', or: 'No, you like that person.'"
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It was apparently revealed Love Island is unlikely to be including gay people in its future series despite earlier reports show bosses were initially keen to include a range of sexualities.
ITV Commissioner Amanda Starvi has spoken out about the sexuality issue, explaining producers did try to feature more diversity but it would not work with the show's current format.
She said the programme's creators "want to encourage greater inclusivity and diversity in terms of gay islanders".
But she also said islanders need an equal number of choices when coupling up to make the competition fair.
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She told the Radio Times: "There’s a sort of logistical difficulty, because although Islanders don’t have to be 100 per cent straight, the format must sort of give [the] Islanders an equal choice when coupling up".
“With our dating shows, such as The Cabins, there is much more sexual diversity. The formats don’t have as much restrictions as Love Island.
She added: "So we’re very sort of mindful of that across our programming on ITV and dating series. But that’s the difficulty with Love Island."
Love Island is thought to have attracted a record number of applications for this year's series and bosses have already interviewed over 1,000 contestants ahead of the show.
Daily Star have approached ITV for comment.
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