Belle Hassan is not the first Love Islander to complain about trolling on social media. Yet in her case, there was a certain horrible inevitability about it after the 28-year-old former make-up artist found herself at the centre of a bullying storm in the All Star version of the show earlier this year.
When footage was broadcast apparently showing Belle and two friends ganging up on fellow competitor Lucinda Strafford, the show attracted a record 8,500 complaints to the regulator Ofcom in a single day.
Emerging at the end of February from the South African estate where the star islanders were sequestered, she faced an onslaught of abuse.
‘I would get, “Why don’t you kill yourself” all day, every day,’ says Belle, who strongly objects to what she calls the ‘bully narrative’ around her behaviour.
‘I would constantly be told that there was no point in my being alive and that I should just die.’
As ITV gears up for its 13th series of the original Love Island, which airs in early June, the focus is once again on the psychological support of contestants, whose beauty does not always go hand in hand with thick skin or mental wellness.
Belle takes pride in being a tough cookie and a ‘big personality’, so when we meet she sticks her chin out and says things like: ‘I don’t mind being hated.’
But then is quickly reduced to tears when talking about the profound impact the show has had on her.
Love Islander Belle Hassan says she has been trolled on social media, adding that it would sometimes leave her feeling like ‘there isn’t a point in being alive’
Belle rose to fame when she was first cast in the show in 2019 and then then invited to return this year (pictured alongside Sean Stone on the recent Love Island: All Stars series)
‘There are days when I have felt I don’t want to be here,’ she tells me. ‘There are some days which are very difficult for me. I have been so low. Sometimes you can shrug off the hate and other times it hits, and you feel like there isn’t a point in being alive.’
The issue feels all the more serious as she suffered with depression, suicidal thoughts and self-harm for a number of years as a teenager, triggered by an ex-boyfriend who verbally abused and harassed her at school in south east London – a background that was well known to ITV when she was first cast in the show in 2019 and then invited to return this year.
Now, a few weeks since the end of Love Island: All Stars, she claims the TV channel did not offer enough support during and after the filming, and fears that if the show carries on as it is there may well be a repeat of past tragedies. Former contestants Mike Thalassitis and Sophie Gradon both took their own lives: Mike in 2019; Sophie in 2018.
Thalassitis became famous overnight thanks to Love Island in 2017, going from 15,000 to 50,000 social media followers, but struggled to cope with fame, and was put on antidepressants. An inquest heard he hanged himself after drinking and taking cocaine.
Sophie Gradon, who was in series two of the show in 2017, killed herself the following year. She complained of ‘intense’ bullying online after coming out.
Many other Love Island contestants have complained about online cruelty after leaving the show, with Coco Lodge in 2023 calling the levels of abuse ‘hard to process’, for example.
ITV have repeatedly promised to increase their duty of care to the young people who come ‘looking for love’ on Love Island – or more accurately – hoping to launch themselves as influencers and celebrities. It says it carries out ‘rigorous and extensive’ checks on the mental and physical health of contestants, and supports them during and after Love Island.
However, Belle says she has had just one aftercare meeting with ITV in the six weeks since the show ended. That meeting was cancelled, rescheduled and eventually carried out via Zoom.
Belle feels her concerns, and her evidently shaky emotional state, were brushed aside by bosses, who she says ‘fobbed her off’ with platitudes.
‘I love the executives individually and I am grateful to them all,’ she tells me. ‘But I worry for the next set of people if they cannot deal with the arguments and the toxic atmosphere. They could have stepped in and helped me when I was on Love Island, but they did not.
‘Afterwards, I didn’t get much back from the meeting. I told them about my problems and they didn’t say they were going to really do anything about it. They did say there was help and therapy available.’
She adds: ‘I really struggled in there and I don’t know that I got as much support as I needed.
‘It would be unfair to say that they didn’t try. But there wasn’t enough.
‘When I was younger, I really struggled with my mental health and there were times when I just didn’t want to be here any more. I did go back to that place after coming out. There were some days which were very difficult for me.’
Speaking to Belle, whose father is film actor Tamer Hassan, it’s clear the young people in the show, fronted by Maya Jama, are manipulated to a degree which means it can scarcely be counted as reality TV.
Not that she or anyone else seems to turn a hair. Everyone appears to entirely accept there’s nothing ‘real’ about the romances and alliances which are formed; it’s all just entertainment, provided by malleable, thick-skinned, beautiful and fame-hungry people, who are willing to do whatever the Love Island producers suggest.
Belle’s appearance on Love Island: All Stars led to her being at the centre of a bullying storm when footage apparently showed her and two friends ganging up on a fellow competitor
Belle, whose father is film actor Tamer Hassan (pictured), describes joining the show as ‘definitely a lot different as an experience’
In fairness to ITV, Belle absolutely knew what she was getting into. She was in the 2019 show, where she entered at the Casa Amor stage – a mid-season twist where a bombshell contestant is introduced to the villa to stir things up. On that show, she was noted for a romance with Anton Danyluk and their date that involved milking a goat. This time around, it was her difficulties with contestant Lucinda, and some screaming rows, which earned her the nickname ‘Hurricane Belle’.
She says she was recovering from a ‘bad’ break up with Scottish rugby player Luke Crosbie. They split around eight months before the show began filming, but she says she was depressed and jumped at the chance to be on TV again.
‘I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I don’t think that I quite did. It was definitely a lot different as an experience. Before I had come in at Casa Amor and I wasn’t in the main storylines. This time I was in so many big characters and storylines.
‘It didn’t feel as natural as it did the last time around. There were so many arguments and so many games. Every time it quietened down, the producers would ask us to start it up again.
‘We would be speaking to the producers pretty much all day every day. You would have them in your ear constantly and they were also always on set talking to you.
‘They would nudge you in a direction of where they wanted you to go and who they wanted you to talk to and what they wanted you to say. When you chatted with someone, they would ask the contestants to say what they thought about the recoupling or make a joke. They were egging on the conflicts.’
She adds: ‘I did come to suspect that I was being set up as a mean girl or as part of a mean girls crowd. They hid things in order to create a narrative that wasn’t true. I know it’s a TV show and things are set up for entertainment, but people are not aware.
‘There definitely should be a warning before the show – like in The Only Way Is Essex – to say that situations may have been set up for entertainment purposes.
‘They cut out the bits where we were getting along, when all the girls had lunch together, when we were doing each other’s hair. They liked to concentrate on us playing games and trying to get big reactions.’
These she certainly delivered. Footage showed Belle and the others having a number of heated confrontations with Lucinda, with Belle imitating the way Lucinda walked and also saying that her tears were fake.
Belle, though, doesn’t regret how she behaved. She says she was ‘triggered’ by what she calls ‘reactive abuse’ and that Lucinda prodded her until she exploded.
‘I have always been quite a controversial person,’ she insists. ‘You love me or you hate me. I live with my heart on my sleeve. I knew going in that there would be people watching who would decide that they didn’t like me. I have dealt with that my whole life. I don’t mind being hated.
‘But people would hate me for screaming and shouting and they would be hating me for something which wasn’t the whole picture at all. I do feel ITV should have protected me from that hate.’
She continues: ‘I think the producers should do more to stand by their cast. A lot of people cannot handle the reaction and there have been a lot of casualties from the show. I get that they have to make a TV show but they know what they are putting out and they should be responsible for it.’
She thinks the welfare team were ‘brilliant’, but ‘the producers did nothing but ramp it up and up and up’.
On the show, every contestant can ask as often as they like to see an on-site psychologist employed by ITV. Belle believes that her psychologist would report her ‘triggers’ to the producers who would then invent games which would play on them.
‘I feel that they took information about my mental health and used it to play games with me,’ she says.
At some points, she says, the psychologist would advise her to go to the beach hut, where there were no cameras, so she wouldn’t be prodded by producers into having damaging arguments.
‘In the end the psychologist said if they ask you to have any more conversations, then go and sit in the beach hut and say nothing and I will come and find you – just wait for me. She really did have my back. She said don’t say a word, just get out of there and I will come to you.’
Belle has split from Harrison Solomon, 23, whom she coupled up with at the end of the show
She adds: ‘Some days I can have a laugh about it and think it’s funny, but other days it’s so bad.’
When the Daily Mail contacted ITV, a spokesperson pointed to the channel’s ‘extensive duty of care measures’ which include ‘comprehensive psychological support’ before and during filming, ‘bespoke training for all islanders on the impacts of social media and handling potential negativity’ and a ‘proactive aftercare package which extends support to all Islanders for a period of 14 months following their participation on the show’. A minimum of eight therapy sessions are offered to islanders when they return home, according to guidelines.
‘These protocols continue to be evaluated and reviewed ahead of each series.’
Belle hopes that in the future she might team up with a mental health charity, and says she is trying to use her large followings on Instagram (1.1 million) and TikTok (18.3 million likes) to reach out to other people who are suffering from mental health issues.
‘I have been through hell and back in my own mind. I have dealt with it and I hope that I can reassure people that they will be all right.’
Rather unsurprisingly she has split from Harrison Solomon, 23, whom she coupled up with at the end of the show. ‘With Harrison, when we were on the show we had only just started our journey together. It was only ever very early days.
‘I don’t have a bad word to say about him. We came out of the show and went on a few dates and had loads of fun. I had real feelings for him, but we were busy, we drifted. Also at the end of the day I’m 28 and he’s 23. I want to have kids soon and I know he’s not going to be ready for that for years.’
She’s talking to TV producers about possible entertainment formats going forward, but is also taking time to recover from a Love Island experience she clearly found distressing, describing herself as feeling physically and mentally broken by her appearance on the show.
Several other Love Islanders have criticised her behaviour on Love Island: All Stars, but she brushes it aside, saying: ‘I may be a nightmare, but I am not a liar.’
Still, the abuse on social media continues. Can it possibly have been worth all the pain? It’s a sad reflection on modern celebrity that Belle focuses on the one upside to her All Stars appearance: ‘I did gain the most followers [out of all the contestants] across all platforms,’ she says. And that, after all, is what it’s about.
- For help and support, call 116 123 to talk to Samaritans or text MRF to 85258 to speak to a trained volunteer from Shout, the UK’s Crisis Text Line service.
