Love Island Australia 2025 OG Yana was left shocked after her recent ex, Kye, entered the villa as the second male bombshell, and producers have revealed why they decided to throw the former flames back into each other’s lives.
Before Kye entered the villa, Yana had already mentioned him plenty, telling the Islanders they’d only split a few months ago, and called him “toxic”. And, it wasn’t just the Islanders Yana vented about Kye to. Love Island’s executive producer Josie Steele and creative director Alex Mavroidakis said that the Sydney plumber spent the majority of her audition talking about him.
Josie explained on the Love Island Australia: Officially Unpacked podcast that during the application process, all Islanders are asked for the Instagram handles of their exes, and producers get in touch if they find them interesting.
“She talked about Kye a lot in her application, and he looked interesting,” Josie said. “So we just reached out and asked if he would be interested in applying.”
“So it wasn’t like we were like, he definitely has to come on. She definitely has to come on. We just thought, interesting. Let’s just meet him and see if he’s interesting as well.”
Alex explained that both Yana and Kye spent the majority of their auditions talking about each other.
“[Their breakup] was so current, you know, they’d only just split up. And so then we met them both and obviously they had no idea each other were coming. I think Yana posted something on TikTok, so Kye may have had an idea that she was applying, but he certainly didn’t know that she was going on.
“So then we met her in person, and she spent 75% of her audition — we call it an audition, but really it’s just a chat like this — talking about her ex-boyfriend, Kye. We then met him the next day, I think it was, and he spent 75% of his time talking about his ex-girlfriend, Yana.”
Josie added that the casting team found both Yana and Kye intriguing and said they probably would have made it on the show independently of each other anyway.
“But it was like it was just so compelling that they were still clearly thinking about each other,” she said.
Producers thought Yana was strong enough to handle her ex coming into the villa
Ever since Kye entered the villa — and subsequently started hooking up with Yana’s Love Island bestie, Lacey — viewers have taken to social media to claim that the situation is unfair to Yana.
Alex and Josie said that an Islanders emotional resilience is something they consider before doing something as potentially damaging as bringing in their ex.
“Duty of care to Islanders is the absolute number one most important thing. We have welfare producers, psychologists, doctors, nurses, executive producers like you’re literally safer in the Love Island villa than you will be in any nightclub in Australia,” Alex said.
“Now we have to make a judgment call. Can they handle this?
“Yana is a very, very, very robust human being, and we knew that she was a type that, the personality type, that can handle this sort of thing, and we know that she could go on to flourish after it.”
Alex referred to the most recent recoupling ceremony, which saw Yana save Kye from being dumped from the villa, and used ratings as a reason for choosing to put the ex-lovers in the same house.
“We knew she could hack it. It’s very full on at the moment, but she handles it amazingly well,” he said.
“And look, it’s so noisy….the noise on socials, the ratings that we’re getting are bigger and noisier than we’ve ever had before. So it’s clearly captured the [audience].”
Love Island Australia airs Monday – Thursday on 9Now.
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