ITV has revealed the first 12 Islanders heading into the Love Island villa, setting up the new season before the opening episode airs on Monday at 9pm. The cast reveal gives the summer series its first concrete shape, and one of the names drawing early attention is Lorenzo Alessi, a 28-year-old business owner from Hertfordshire.
That is why viewers are searching for George Love Island now: the show is back for a 13th season, and the first round of contestants is finally public. Love Island returns on ITV2 and ITVX on Monday 1 June at 9pm, giving fans a first look at the people who will walk into the villa before the game begins.
Alessi arrives with a self-aware line in his own description. He says he believes all is fair in love and war, calls himself a self deprecating person, and says he would even encourage another Islander to go and speak to a girl he was interested in. “Sometimes it ends up working, reverse psychology,” he said, a remark that fits the kind of sideways confidence reality TV tends to reward.
His tastes are just as specific. Alessi says his type traditionally is a blonde, that he has a penchant for a posh girl, and that he looks closely at a woman’s arms, describing the ideal as “really strange” and comparing it to the kind of arm and neck he sees on Jessica Alba or Angelina Jolie. He called that preference “very elegant,” and added that it was “very niche,” which is the sort of detail that tends to travel fast once a villa cast is announced.
Alessi is one of the first 12 Islanders ITV revealed ahead of launch, but the way those contestants will be introduced or paired inside the villa has not been set out. That leaves the central question for Monday night not who is in the cast, but how quickly the series will turn those first impressions into the kind of coupling decisions that drive the show from the opening minutes.
