Love Islander Georgia Steel became a victim of vicious online trolls after she appeared in this year’s All Stars series. She tells OK! of her plans to fight back
WORDS: LAUREN FLETCHER PHOTOS: FILIPA LISBOA STYLING: TEONA ROZELAAR HAIR: ALICIA DOBSON MAKE-UP: AALIYAH DIAZ STUDIO: STUDIO URBN
LOVE AND HATE
Georgia Steel walked away with her man at the end of this year’s Love Island: All Stars series. But the online trolling she was subjected to about her time in the villa was so bad it left her scared to leave her house and resulted in her taking a break from social media.
No stranger to the world of showbiz, Georgia, 25, first appeared on the programme as a 19-year-old in 2018, when her iconic phrase “I’m loyal, babes!” went down in the show’s history books.
But her stint on the spin-off series in South Africa and the online backlash that followed left her wanting to make a positive change in the world of social media.
Speaking about the abuse, Georgia tells us, “The first week when I came out [of the villa], it was really overwhelming. I don’t know how I got through it when I was 19.
“I think I dealt with it a bit better this time around, because I’d done it before. But there was intense trolling while I was in the villa this time, so I just took some time away from social media and spent time with my family.”
What made it especially hard, says Georgia, was that her family and friends saw the abuse, too.
“That was awful,” she says. “The first thing I asked them was, ‘Do you really feel like I did anything wrong in the villa? Could I have done anything better?’, but they said I didn’t.”
“It feels a bit wrong because the boys would be doing those things, but for a girl to get to know multiple people at the same time, it was so frowned upon. I feel that it’s double standards. But I also feel like, as long as my family and friends are fine, and what they considered I did in the villa was OK, that’s all that really matters to me.”
Despite support from her family, friends and her Love Island other half Toby Aromolaran, Georgia had a lot to deal with – particularly when she received death threats online.
“It’s not nice to get horrible comments and death threats,” she says. “Even some of my friends in the public eye that were sticking up for me were receiving death threats.
“People forget that Love Island is a reality TV show and things are dramatised for entertainment, but th
