Love Island’s Zachariah Noble opened up about experiencing body shaming when he left the show and how he struggled with his mental health inside the villa.
Chatting to hosts Bobby Norris and Stephen Leng on the showbiz gossip programme Access All Areas, the reality star spoke candidly about how the change in lifestyle negatively impacted him while filming: “I feel like I struggled a little bit with my mental health while I was in there because I’m one of those people that if I can’t train or eat a certain way, my body reflects it. Not being able to do that usual routine, I felt myself letting myself go slowly. I came out to a lot of lovely comments, but a lot of the hate I also received was about my body and how I looked. I’m not one of those people with that genetic gift of being able to eat what I want and always look good. I need a certain routine. How I look is literally a reflection of my lifestyle.”
He continued: “The whole body shaming thing has really shocked me how much it’s come up. It’s crazy. I feel like when you body shame women for example, its shunned, you can’t ever do it, it’s terrible. I completely agree, you should never body shame anyone. But when it comes to men, it’s almost comical, it’s a joke. It’s banter. I feel like a lot of problems with men’s mental health is we’ll read a comment but we’re not going to talk to anyone about it. I think that’s the issue as well. People don’t want to talk because we’re now admitting embarrassment. I don’t deal with hate, I’m thick skinned, it fuels me.”
Later in the interview, the reality star finalist admitted he went onto the show wanting to “play a game” initially: “The way I have watched Love Island before, I definitely had some sort of game plans and some preconceived ideas of how the people in there were going to be. So I’d gone in there trying to play a game. I felt like I was only going to be in there a couple of weeks as well. That was my mindset. With me and Molly [Marsh], something just happened and after our first conversation I was like you know what? I need to see how this can go. It’s just worked out really well. I can’t believe it myself right now.”
Listen to the full episode, also featuring Pixie Polite, here.
