After their few week stint on 'Love Island', Coco and Josh sat down with the one and only, Murad Merali to talk about the reality of the show both inside and outside the villa walls.
If you read about or watched Jazmine, Molly, and Charlie's exit interview with Merali, you'll have heard the criticisms the girls made of Coco. In particular, Jazmine claimed "she is playing a big game in that villa" and that essentially, Coco had slyly gone behind her back and kissed Andrew when Jaz and Andrew were pretty cosy.
Now we're getting to hear Coco's side of the story — and it's a lot different to how her fellow islanders spun it. Off the bat, Coco states that she was "shocked" when she left the villa, returning to the "real world" full of trolls commenting on her looks and the things that Jaz and Molly said in their interviews which perpetuated the hate towards her.
While Jaz was adamant that she and Andrew were for realsies "I was like oh my God, I think I'm gonna come out with a boyfriend", Coco is strong in her absolute and total rebuttal. Coco defended her actions, backing them up by saying "You didn't have a connection with Andrew otherwise it would’ve been shown on TV”.
Completely baffled by the women's slights, Coco said the day of the Casa Amor recoupling, all of the girls were friends and supporting one another. Ultimately, she feels that the pair were just looking for the five minutes of fame that they realistically and admittedly didn't get on the show, "I think it’s someone just trying to get their name out there if I’m honest".
Mutually, Coco and Josh feel like the show didn't represent who they were very well, with Josh impressing on us that his "goofy" side was not shown at all despite it being the reason the casting team allegedly chose him in the first place.
Josh illustrates the kind of person he was inside of the villa "90% of the time I was goofy and loud" and there were many conversations that were unaired between he and Summer especially over the last few days, "We were having really good chats about baby names". He even notes that one of them was "Safari".
Coco agrees with how most islanders who've left the villa feel about production, "It’s an edited and produced show and people forget that". She was astonished at how her "one liners" were edited in such a way that people thought she was a "bad 'b'" when in reality, she tells Merali, "I was a sad 'b'".
When Andrew chose to "twist" and couple up with Coco, she was elated "When he chose me I was so genuinely happy... I liked this person". But the aftermath, as we know, didn't go in Coco's favour. She revealed that before the recoupling she could tell Andrew's head was all over the place.
According to Coco, she had genuine feelings for the guy and encouraged him "don’t take me back if you’re going to get back with Tasha”. So when the inevitable happened, Coco claims she kicked off and she states that producers didn't air her "hyperventilating" and breaking one of the lights at the front of the villa (even though it was a mistake).
"My moon is in Pisces" she explains of her emotional side, tearing up when she begins talking about how "be kind" is only considered once something bad has happened. On the outside, Coco has been dolled out serious backlash over the way she looks, but has something to say to them, "Whatever people think about me I know that I’m beautiful".
Not only did she get the brunt of these negative comments about her appearance from online trolls, but from the men in the villa too. When filming stopped, she was told about one of the guys jeering "that I’m a 4 out of 10".
Of the misogyny we're seeing displayed onscreen night after night these days, both Josh and Coco feel like editing has a part to play in it in combination with just how "intense" an environment it is in there. At the end of the day, one of the biggest takeaways for these two, in particular Coco is to remember that "We’re not characters, we’re real people".
Watch the full interview with Murad Merali here.
