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    See Love Island USA Star Melanie Moreno’s Photos as Plus-Size Model

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    Watch: Love Island USA Season 8 Introduces New Twist With Throuples

    From the runway to the villa, Melanie Moreno knows how to make an entrance.

    It’s been revealed that the Love Island USA star—who shared in the season eight premiere that she works as a bikini store manager—had a previous career as a plus-size model before joining the cast of the Peacock dating show. 

    Moreno, 24, has modeled on the runway and in digital campaigns for recognizable fashion brands, as seen in past photos and videos dating back to as early as 2022 that are now re-circulating thanks to the new Love Island fan base cheering her on in her couple with Sincere Rhea.

    The reality star appeared to have a specialty in sporting beachy attire long before she landed in Fiji, with several of her modeling moments showing off stylish bathing suits, including when Moreno rocked the Miami Swim Week 2022 runway for Pretty Little Thing in a shimmery gold one-piece with an asymmetrical strap. 

    And it’s no secret why the Philadelphia, Pa. native pursued her passion for fashion. 

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    Love Island USA‘s Rob Rausch Shaves His Head in New Transformation

    “I loved being in college, I just knew it wasn’t meant for me and I wanted to give my dream a chance,” Moreno explained to VoyageLA in 2021 of why she dropped out after her first semester, adding, “I was then scouted by my now manager Elizabeth. My biggest dream since I was ten years old was to be a model. I lost myself so badly that I let go of that dream and tried to focus on something that was ‘more practical.'”

    However, the road to becoming a working model wasn’t easy, Moreno—who addressed the importance of mental health awareness in the modeling industry through her brand MORE SPORT STUDIO—also confessed. 

    PrettyLittleThing/YouTube

    “I had this belief that I had to look perfect to even get into the business. I thought I needed a specific look or a specific body type,” she shared. “Little did I know I was wrong. I tried for nine years to get scouted and signed but I still truly believe I was found at the perfect time.”  

    Ultimately, Moreno was proud of how her hard work paid off. As she put it, “My childhood dream finally became a reality this year when I was officially signed to one of the biggest agencies in NYC, Wilhelmina.”

    And Moreno isn’t the only Islander with more going on behind the scenes. Keep reading for a look at Love Island‘s best-kept secrets.

    Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images

    How Love Island Comes Together So QuicklyProvided by 85 hidden cameras, there’s a surplus of footage to be whittled into an hour-long episode at the end of every day.But that’s how they roll, with editors taking Monday’s footage that night and rapidly turning it into Tuesday’s episode, and so on.Luckily, Fiji—where the USA show’s first season was set and where it’s been since season five—is 16 hours ahead of East Coast time, meaning a late-night finish means it’s still the previous day’s morning in the U.S., giving the team precious extra hours to get the new episode just right.“The islanders wake up, the control room [will be] commissioning scenes based on what’s happening,” executive producer Claudine Parrish told The Wrap in 2024. “They’ll label them like, ‘Boys make breakfast for the girls,’ and 15 minutes after it’s happened, it’s in our edits—and editor [is] on it and making it into a scene.”And it takes a village: Parrish said there are about 30 editors and 20 producers, and a story team figures out which moments and conversations should be woven together into a larger narrative.Though sometimes, Parrish admitted, what seems interesting doesn’t always go anywhere. “We don’t always get it right,” she said. “We’re always making that call on, ‘Is this important or is this going to change by tomorrow?’”

    Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images

    What Do Islanders Eat on Love Island?Breakfast is obviously the most important meal of the day on this show. And with the guys in charge of preparing food and coffee for the ladies on Love Island USA, it’s become a topic of international fascination.But what does everyone eat for lunch and dinner, you ask?Well, on a show where the actual food isn’t the point (unless it’s undercooked pancakes or your first-ever omelet), it’s not a focus but it’s readily available.“There are no menus,” Love Island UK season four winner Dani Dyer told HELLO! in 2021, “it is catering, so obviously breakfast you cook yourself, so you have like eggs, bacon, toast and that kind of stuff.”Season eight’s Luca Bish had no idea who did the cooking, saying in a July 2023 TikTok it was “some mystery chef out in the field somewhere,” and the food was delivered to the villa.Bish wasn’t really a fan of the food, so, he shared, “Most of the time I would say I was having, for lunch and dinner, hummus and crisps.”

    Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images

    Men and Women Don’t Eat Together on Love Island As multiple contestants have revealed over the years, the men and women eat separately, except on dates.“We eat with the producers but it runs like a boarding school,” Love Island UK season three alum Olivia Attwood told The Sunin 2022. “When we have dinner, it’s like them telling us we need to clean the bedroom, that laundry day is tomorrow and asking us what we want for our breakfast the next day, all just things that make the house run smoothly.”And much like being on a jury, they’re not allowed to discuss the case among themselves.“It was mad,” season eight contestant Samuel Agbiji told Closer in 2024, “because when you’re eating you want to talk about what’s going on, but you can’t because it affects the filming.”

    Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images

    Is There a Drink Limit on Love Island?You might assume that drinking to flirty excess might be, if not encouraged, then not frowned upon, but contestants are limited to one drink per night, and only beer, wine or bubbly.Given the choice of a glass of red or white wine at dinner, Phoebe Siegel of Love Island USA’s fourth season said in a June 2024 TikTok, it was “not a generous pour.”When there is what appears to be an open bar, such as during a Casa Amor challenge win celebration, Siegel said, the drinks were “completely watered down.”

    Jeff Spicer/BAFTA/Getty Images

    Who Is That Witty Scottish Announcer on Love Island?Iain Stirling pulls a double shift as the narrator of both Love Island UK and Love Island USA—and during filming, he’s also on a tight schedule.“At 12 in the afternoon U.K. time, I’d log on to Love Island UK,” the Scottish comedian detailed to TODAY in 2024. “By that point, the show’s all but finished. Then we’d write for two or three hours. Done by about 4, half 4. Then I’d get a child dinner, bath time, bed time—I’d love for it to be more rock ‘n’ roll than that, but that was my life. Then I’d have some food, and then I would log on to Love Island USA at half past 8, which is really early Fiji time.”Stirling watches a rough cut from home over Zoom, exec producer Parrish explained to The Wrap, and he and the writers are “just observing funny things in the scene, or reminders of what’s happened in the story, that gets recorded…at home on his microphone.”His narration is added to the episode before the episode is sent to Peacock’s legals and standards team (which does sometimes have notes that require last-minute changes).“We’d try to finish by about 12 or 1 in the morning, then I’d stay up till half to 3 — which is still not the end of the show for the U.S.,” Stirling told TODAY. “In a dream world, I’d be staying up ‘til like, 5, 6, in the morning, but that would basically involve me never sleeping.”Proof that the franchise can produce a forever bond: Stirling married former Love Island UK host Laura Whitmore in 2020 and they welcomed a daughter in March 2021.

    Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images

    How Does Love Island Select Its Music Soundtrack?From the opening strains of Janelle Monae’s “Make Me Feel” to the show’s official theme song, “From Fiji With Love” by The Daniel Pemberton TV Orchestra and all the pop songs cued in between, the Love Island USA music has become a whole vibe.“It really was seeing Love Island UK for the first time where I was like, ‘Oh, it just is a leveling up of reality and how we can tell stories when you have this personal connection to a pop song and you see it used in context of a story that you’re watching on TV,” Love Island USA executive producer James Barker told Rolling Stone in a June 2025 interview. “I think that this is where my brain immediately said, ‘One, this is amazing, and more shows should be like this. And two, how do I work on Love Island?”While songs have to be selected to fit the scenario at a moment’s notice, a music clearance company goes to work months ahead of time to ensure that, as Barker put it, an “arsenal of tracks” from the likes of Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX and Olivia Rodrigo are licensed long before they’re needed.“We work to get hundreds or sometimes thousands of songs ready to go, because we don’t know where the story’s going,” Barker explained. “‘OK, this track is going to be great for when somebody eventually breaks up with somebody, or this track is going to be the perfect first-kiss song when that comes up.’”

    Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images

    Is There Music in the Love Island Villa?Ironically, the islanders can’t listen to music in the villa, not least because of the clearance headaches that might cause, but also because that could make conversations harder for the hidden cameras and microphones to pick up.There are exceptions when it comes to songs heard in real time, such as during certain challenges or a slow-motion dance party—or if they get into a cab to go on a date and the driver is playing music.

    Ben Symons/Peacock

    How Do the Women Get Their Hair, Nails and Makeup Done on Love Island?To ensure the ladies feel camera-ready at all times, the production provides makeup and skin care items in the house—and of course they can bring their own, but any brand names on their personal items will be covered up in post-production.But for more complicated grooming, there are professionals in the mix. “Every two or three weeks we’d have nails, hair, that kind of thing done,” Love Island UK season five alum Lucie Dolan told Capital FM in 2021. “Being in there that long, the nights are very long and no one sees how long they are, so you need a bit of a down day and a bit of a chill.”And on their Saturdays off, “when there is no show on,” former host Whitmore told OK!, “their eyelashes and acrylic nails get redone.”Back in the day, islanders would have to go elsewhere, but now the show can’t have the contestants out in the wild during filming.”Apparently in the first series, [they] left the villa to go to a salon to have their hair done,” Whitmore said, “but now, because the show is so big, they can’t, so they have a girl who comes in to do their roots.”

    Adam Torgerson/CBS via Getty Images

    Do Love Island Producers Manipulate the Plot?Producers say they’re perfectly content to ride the waves of romance.“We play along with what’s happening in real time in the villa,” Love Island USA executive producer Ben Thursby-Palmer told The Wrap in 2024. “If everyone’s really happy in their couple, there’s no real point to recoupling.” On the flip side, “If they’re all sleeping in different beds all around the villa…We need to reset and put them back together.”The show wasn’t scripted “at all,” Love Island UK season nine alum Samie Elishi said in an April 2023 YouTube video. But if producers “didn’t encourage us to go and talk to your couple or someone you’re having an argument with or anything like that, then there would be no show. You do get encouraged to have certain chats, but what’s said within them is completely up to you.”

    Lila Seeley/PEACOCK via Getty Images

    What Do the Love Island Phones Do?Production gives the islanders phones for calling and messaging each other, snapping photos and getting alerts about upcoming happenings that are intended to be read out loud.“They give you these basic little phones where you can text each other but nobody really uses them,” Love Island UK season two alum Liana Isadora Van Riel told The Sun in 2019. “They’re only really there for the whole ‘I’ve got a text’ aspect.”Otherwise, Love Island USA’s Siegel noted in a TikTok, “You can’t Google, you can’t watch TV, you can’t access your socials, you can’t text anybody [outside the show].”

    Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images

    Ariana Madix Is Supposed to Remain Neutral on Love IslandIn the grand tradition of reality competition peacemakers, Love Island USA host Ariana Madix has to pretend she doesn’t feel a way about what’s unfolding on her watch.“It’s hard because part of me wants to jump in there sometimes,” she told The Wrap in 2024. “But also as a host I have to be somewhat impartial, at least in front of them.”At the same time, she did weigh in when Andrea Carmona was voted off in season six and Rob Rausch impulsively added that he’d leave with her. Madix gently advised him to reconsider and he ended up staying.“I don’t think that making a big decision like that in a highly emotional moment is the best thing to do,” Madix explained. “Also, part of me felt like I wanted to call his bluff because I didn’t really think that he wanted to leave.”

    Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images

    Where Are the Cameras on Love Island?“There are no cameramen anywhere near the islanders,” Madix—who lives in a nearby hotel with a view of the villa during filming—noted. “There are cameras set up throughout the entire villa, and then there are walls where they have sliders and there are cameramen behind the wall that can move, but the islanders never really see the cameramen and there are no areas of the house—aside from the obvious like the toilet or the shower—that are blind spots, and so you might think you’re having a secret conversation in a corner that’s not the case.”

    Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images

    Are There Areas of the Love Island Villa With No Cameras?Another spot with no cameras: The kitchen pantry where the snacks are, according to Love Island UK’s Elishi. Where, she said in her April 2023 video, only one person is allowed in at a time, because “some stuff happened in the pantry with a couple before.”

    ITV/Shutterstock

    Are Contestants Given Condoms on Love Island?Multiple Love Island UK contestants have shared that there are show-branded condoms placed throughout the villa and replenished upon request.Plus, alum JaNa Craig told Cosmopolitan that contestants are tested for STDs before going into the villa. 

    ITV/Shutterstock

    Do the Bombshells Watch Love Island Before Entering the Villa?Before the bombshells show up to potentially alter the lay of the land, they’re allowed to watch the show to brush up on the action so far.Love Island UK bombshell Chloe Burrows said on an April 2023 episode of her podcast Chloe vs. The World that they can watch every episode except the one that airs before they get there—and then provide their top three choices among the existing islanders.

    ITV/Shutterstock

    Why Doesn’t Love Island USA Drop New Episodes on Wednesdays?While the cameras never stop filming, the contestants do get one day off a week to just hang out.Which also means, however, that the mealtime rule applies, in that there’s no gossiping and any confrontations have to wait until the next day. And, since there are no dates on their off-days, the women and men can’t share beds that night.“What happens is when you take your mics off, you’re not allowed to talk about anything to do with the show,” Kem Cetinay from Love Island UK’s third season, told Britain’s This Morning in 2017. “You can all sit and chat but they are quite careful about what you talk about because they want to keep it so everyone at home can see and get it on video. It’s more a day off from all the intense games, all the intense dates, deciding who you like and don’t like.”

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