Vasana Montgomery was removed from Love Island USA just days before the season 8 premiere after social media videos surfaced showing her using a racist slur.
The 25-year-old had been announced last week as one of the 12 original bombshells for the eighth season, a spot that would have put her at the center of the show’s opening stretch. Instead, the role vanished before viewers ever saw her on screen.
The videos were posted May 30 by an Instagram page called The Reality Rundown. In one clip, Montgomery was shown singing along to a song. In another, she was heard saying, “knock, knock, expletive,” the same slur that prompted the removal.
Montgomery owns and operates Vanity Square Studios in Salem, where the business has specialized in tattoos, lashes and brows for nearly six years. Her removal turns a social-media flashpoint into a career interruption and leaves Love Island USA facing a problem the franchise has already seen before.
It is the second year in a row that a Love Island USA contestant has been kicked off the show for using a slur. Yulissa Escobar left after the second episode last summer after using the same one, and Cierra Ortega later exited in the final stretches of that season after saying a slur used against Asian people.
That pattern matters because the show is again entering a premiere window with one of its original cast members gone before the audience has even met the full lineup. A separate preview gap remains, too: it has not been confirmed whether the series will replace Montgomery before the season 8 launch.
For now, the removal leaves Love Island USA with one fewer bombshell and one more reminder that the casting process is no longer the end of the story once old posts come back to life. In a season that was supposed to begin with first impressions, Montgomery’s exit has already made one of its sharpest ones.
