The cast of “Love Island USA” takes their televised search for love extremely seriously.
Thankfully, the voice of “Love Island” does not.
Iain Stirling narrates the daily dramas of Peacock’s reality hit, cranking out reliably hilarious commentary about contestants’ back tattoos, dry-humping challenges and mosquitoes that interrupt intimate moments. The Scottish stand-up comedian is the show’s unlikely breakout star — and he doesn’t even pop by the villa.
CNN chatted with Stirling ahead of the Season 7 reunion about taking hot people down a peg, sympathizing with reality TV villains and how the “Love Island” sausage gets made.
This conversation has been edited for clarity.
Has your approach always been to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the show, or were you playing it straight in those early seasons?
My initial reaction to it as a young stand-up comedian was, “Look at these idiots!” Whereas Mark (Busk-Cowley, series co-creator) was going, “You can’t do that because it’s not nice, but more importantly, it’s one tone. If you start there, where do you go from there? All you can do is be more aggressive and more cruel.”
So we’d look for those little shots in the back, those little moments that maybe people didn’t notice. And if someone’s got a ridiculous outfit on, or their own name tattooed on their back, it brings you in with the viewers when you say something. They’re like, “Thank God. I thought that was just me!” It’s sort of like doing observational stand-up but about a really specific show.
We definitely didn’t get away with as much at the beginning on the UK one. We used to be like, “Oh, the challenges are terrible. You should switch over to Comedy Central right now, there’s quite a good program on there.” (CNN: This season’s challenges included a dairy farm-themed event in which contestants spit milky fluid down each other’s throats; another dressed the cast like sexy lumberjacks and made them gyrate on a log-shaped see-saw.) You obviously can’t say that. Whereas in America, we were brought in specifically because they liked what the UK show did.
You are kind of the voice of reason. Everyone is taking it deadly seriously, so it’s good to have that voice.
I suppose my rule of thumb is always, you’re never cruel about someone, but you can be cruel about what someone’s done. I’m not a huge fan of comedy that hits down on a group of people who are being attacked because they’re in that group of people. But I feel like anyone’s free rein if it’s because of a thing that they did.
They are, for the most part, genuine in their search for love, which is sweet, but they are also easy to tease at times.
Making fun of good-looking people feels good.
Yeah, they can take it. So are you doing both “Love Islands,” UK and US, at the same time? (Both seasons ended at the beginning of this month.)
Yeah, now I am. It’s kind of a mad schedule, but it means I’ve got a bit of summer. If it wasn’t both at the same time, I’d be in a studio in London somewhere, still doing it. So I quite like smashing it all out in one big lump.
It’s nice to see the sun for a few weeks. But how many hours, then, are you in that voiceover booth?
Essentially, it’s 12 in the afternoon ‘til 3 in the morning every day. There’s a bit of a break in between, so I can have dinner with my family, then do my daughter’s bedtime. Sometimes I even go into town and do a gig, which is mad. People think I’m nuts, but I have to do stand-up, or otherwise I’ll go insane.
It can’t all be Huda and Jeremiah.
No, I’ve got to do jokes about something else.
Do you bring it home with you? Like, are you telling your wife, “I just watched the craziest breakup”?
Not at all. It’s funny, because America went so big, this was the first year where she got “Love Island USA” in her algorithm. So she’d be like, “What’s this ‘mamacita’ thing?” (CNN: Stirling is married to former “Love Island UK” host Laura Whitmore, and the “‘mamacita’ thing” involved Huda telling Nic she was a single mom. Nic misunderstood.)
It’s quite easy to stay away from it, because it’s American. I’m in the UK. So I’ve got this idea: The voiceover is this character who cares so passionately about those people, but if he met any of them in real life, outside the context of the villa, he’d have no idea who anyone was, because he’s just like, “The villa’s all that matters.” So I quite like being completely separated from the rest of the world — the voice that only knows what’s happening in that villa.
The faceless, disembodied voice of “Love Island.”
Exactly — omnipotent, completely ignorant to any outside influences.
When you’re recording, are you watching raw footage of everyone and trying to spin comedy from that?
We’re watching as much of a final edit as humanly possible. I think, in a dream world, I’d finish work about 7 in the morning, but that would mean I literally would never sleep.
In the early episodes, when everyone’s still getting to know each other, are the conversations boring? Your intros to the conversation are funny. But is that on purpose, because their conversations are kind of meh?
People think it’s boring because they were so emotionally attached to the contestants at the end of the last series of “Love Island.” And then when it fast forwards to next year and it’s just two people you don’t know or care about having a chat, it’s just more boring. The thing you’ve got to remember as well — those people have never been on telly. They’ve got cameras everywhere, and they’re in this new environment.
And also, I think they’re sort of reinventing themselves as people. I find it really fascinating that all of those people in the villa, give or take, have always been the best-looking person in their college, the best looking person in their city, the best looking person in their state, some of them. “The good looking one” — that’s their thing. And then all of a sudden they’re in the villa, and they might be the least attractive boy there. And that must be such a mindf**k, getting your head around, “All right. Well, I’m not the good looking one. Then what am I?”
“Am I funny?”
And it’s just cringe when you’re getting to know someone — there is nothing cringier than a first date. And you’re having a first date in this new environment where you’re trying to work out who you are and where you function. So I guess that’s why it might feel a bit stilted at the beginning. But it always gets there.
Is there anyone this season that you really loved talking about?
I don’t know if it’s just the UK “Love Island,” but there’s a big thing where you’d introduce yourself as where you’re from, your name and what you do for a living. Whereas in America, it seems, they care more about where they’re from, like if they’re a Southerner or cowgirl, which is not as good for puns and gags. Anyone that’s got a funny job — if there’s a cowboy on the show, I’m absolutely delighted about it. Elevator salesperson, I’ll take that. (CNN: Stirling got both this season with cowboy Taylor and elevator saleswoman Olandria.) So in the beginning, that’s the only prep we do for the show, really. Before it starts, we’ll just get everyone’s jobs and write as many jokes as we can about their jobs as possible.
You’ve done so many seasons of the show. What are the qualities that make someone good TV?
A good “Love Island” contestant is the same as a great sitcom star. The best sitcom characters in the world have got a fatal flaw. Every sitcom ends once that character realizes their fatal flaw. So all the best “Love Island” contestants have got this fatal flaw — it’s annoying to watch them f**k up again. But after you’ve watched them do it a few times, instead of being annoyed with them, you go, “Oh, I have literally done that.” You start to see yourself in them.
Huda’s a great example. At the start, I think people struggled to warm to her. And then when they got that she really meant well, but she had this intensity, I think lots of people, but particularly women, started to go, “Oh my God, I’ve been Huda.” That’s why people start to love her. We’ve all done that, just not on one of the most-watched shows in America.
And then, if you’re Amaya and you have this genuinely comic genius ability to say words wrong — like, I could sit in a room with professional writers for a year and not come up with her phrases.
She’s great TV. Are you sick of this yet?
It would be disingenuous to be like, “I love it every year.” It comes and goes. But the last two or three years have just been such highs. It has been hard at points, but overall, it’s changed my life. And now I love reality television. I didn’t watch reality television other than this. And now I love the “Housewives.” I love “Selling Sunset.”
You’re watching more of it than anyone now.
But I don’t really watch “Love Island.” It’s a great job to have, but I’m not watching it in a purely recreational, fun way. It does take away, if you’re watching a really dramatic bit, and I’m trying to see if there’s any insects in the background that I can pretend are my pet.