Love, for all its poetry, has always been a little bit undignified in practice. We pursue it through chance encounters, bad decisions, grand gestures, and apparently, in a villa in Fiji. This summer, we collectively upgraded our Peacock accounts to premium so that we could watch 12 swimsuit-clad Islanders’ pursuit of love (and $100,000) uninterrupted. More specifically, we were watching Love Island USA, a dating show where a group of singles live together in a villa, couple up, date, flirt, break up, recouple, and endure a rotating gauntlet of kissing each other on a 15-person bed and other cheeky challenges, all while navigating the ever-shifting politics of attraction. And everyone is at all times at least vaguely aware that America is watching. See, the public gets to decide who stays, who gets dumped, and ultimately which couple wins the game of love. On what might be television’s most instantaneous show, Love Island is TV with the turnaround time of breaking news.

Now enter Bryce Alakai and Trinity Tatum, who became quick favorites as part of Season 8’s original cast. As the story goes, boy meets girl: Bryce, who worked on a garbage truck by day and produced music and DJed by night, opens his door to see Trinity, a 22-year-old retail worker from Virginia, and the games begin. But of course, this is Love Island, and nothing remains uncomplicated for long. Through fact-check movie nights, life-and-death karaoke, toe sucking, “french fr*es,” and all the other small indignities that come with attempting to build a relationship while several cameras, a dozen attractive people, and millions of very opinionated strangers are watching, somehow, they fell in love, and America cooed. The internet swooned when Bryce used the word “paragon” correctly in a confessional, while Trinity’s calm maturity, moral conviction, and effortless beauty made her a rare presence in a villa otherwise engineered for emotional whiplash. But it was their courtship, the slow burn, friends-to-lovers chemistry, and perhaps their conscious lack of desperation to stay in the game that made them compelling. In a villa where everyone is ostensibly looking for love, but also, necessarily, playing Love Island (it is a game show after all), Bryce and Trinity didn’t seem to care at all.

Now, a month after winning Love Island, they’re adjusting to the strange afterlife of reality-TV romance with sold-out DJ sets, brand deals, paparazzi, and millions of people who feel like they know them because they watched them fall in love in real time. What happens when the fantasy doesn’t end when you leave the villa? What makes their next chapter particularly interesting is that Love Island has become its own peculiar update to the American Dream: arrive unknown, fall in love in front of millions, survive the public vote, and leave with a new kind of celebrity waiting on the other side. The villa may be behind them, but the audience, and all the eyes that came with it, are not. But that doesn’t seem to bother them as much as you might expect. 

There is, however, one potentially devastating obstacle standing between them and happily ever after: Trinity might not like house music. 

[Bryce and Trinity call in from Palm Springs, the morning after Splash House, a multi-venue poolside festival featuring house, techno, and EDM.]

So, Trinity, has your opinion on house music changed?

Trinity: It definitely changed. I had such a good time. When we went to the festival, it was so different from what I’ve been used to; I’d never been to a festival before. Just seeing the vibe, everybody having such a good time, that great high energy, I was thinking, “Okay, I see why people love house music. I see why people love these events.”

Bryce: Yeah, once you’re in the space, it changes. You see how the songs hit and how they’re designed [to be heard.]

Are you living together in LA now? 

Bryce: I’ve lived in LA for eight years, and I’ve had my place for a while. She’s just been staying with me indefinitely. It’s a good place to begin, because she doesn’t have to pay rent and there’s no pressure or rush to do anything, which is nice. She can just focus on what she needs to focus on.  I’m giving her the freedom to do whatever she feels. But right now, we haven’t slept one night without each other. We’d already spent 42 days sleeping next to each other, every day, 24 hours a day. So you basically speed-run it. I feel like the time isn’t as linear.

Trinity: I’m very conflicted, because I want to be able to give him his own space and have my own space, but at the same time, I feel like even if I got my own place, I’d still just be with him. So I genuinely don’t know how to move right now. This is my first time living—

Bryce: —with somebody.

What is it like to return to the real world with a built-in audience? 

Trinity: It’s amazing to have the support. When you’re in the villa, you’re very sheltered from what the outside world thinks. The show got 19 billion viewing minutes, one of the biggest seasons they’ve had. People have opinions, but we’re very blessed to have more support than negativity.

Bryce: A hundred percent. The positivity feels almost unnatural for a show like this. I rarely see negative comments about us now. There was some when we first came out, but it’s been nothing but positivity since. We’re just so grateful, so much opportunity.
Trinity: It also feels good because people love us for being us. We’ve been genuine on and off the show, so we’re not putting on a front, and people still love us. I don’t have to fake a persona for people to like us. It feels really good to have that support.

And it is true. The numbers are almost difficult to comprehend from inside the villa. Love Island USA had already broken viewership records in its sixth and seventh seasons, becoming the number 1 reality series across all streaming platforms with 434 million minutes viewed. Then Season 8 arrived, pulling 824 million viewing minutes in its first 3 days, a 74% increase from Season 7, before surpassing 2.3 billion minutes streamed halfway through the season. But for Bryce and Trinity, though, those numbers translate into something more tangible. Now having an audience waiting for them when they get home. Being plucked from obscurity (well, almost. Bryce was Tumblr famous, and had a selfie with Kendall Jenner resurface), to now walking in as something much closer to what they say the cast represented: regular people. They both left behind jobs, relationships, their life as they knew it, with little to no guarantee that the experiment would amount to anything beyond a few weeks of television. 

Why do you think this season was received so well?

Bryce: I’m not sure exactly why, though I think each season gets bigger. But I’d say our season didn’t have that much drama, we all really liked each other for the most part. Everyone had their ups and downs, but everyone was friends in there. The guys were friends with each other, the girls were friends with each other. It was a different dynamic than the show’s used to.

Trinity: And I think we’re all just very relatable, regular people. Most of us going in were working normal jobs like the average person. We’re all in our 20s. Some people were servers; I worked in retail; some people worked three jobs. We were all ordinary people going through things people go through regularly. So we were genuine, and we didn’t really have anything to lose, which is why we went in being ourselves.

Bryce: Yeah, I got laid off while I was in Fiji from the garbage-truck job. I would’ve come out of the show pretty screwed if it hadn’t worked out, no job, nothing. It would’ve been rough.

Trinity: You took a chance. That’s the big thing; we all took a leap of faith going on the show. None of us had a backup plan.

Why did you apply for Love Island? Was it about the opportunity or the experience itself?

Trinity: I was in a long, off-and-on relationship with my ex. We’d talk, then stop, talk, then stop. I was going through a lot in that relationship, like most people probably do in their late 20s, early 30s. I took a picture that went viral, and that’s how I got found. They asked if I’d apply to Love Island. I’d watched the show before but had never been open to just kissing people; that wasn’t me. But I thought, ‘I’m 22. I don’t see my husband in Virginia.’ I knew I didn’t want to stay there, and I knew my husband wasn’t going to be there. So, I figured I’d take a leap and try something new. If I get on, I get on. If not, there’ll be another opportunity. Once we got on the show, I wasn’t even thinking about the opportunity anymore. Once he asked me to be his girlfriend, I told him we could leave right then. I was ready to go home. It was such a mental challenge that toward the end I really wanted to leave. I’d found my man, and found what I came for.

Do you think Love Island is a kind of new American Dream? 

Bryce: Yeah, it’s an amazing thing. You were working a regular job three months ago, and now you’re doing magazine covers.

Trinity: It’s such a full-circle moment. A year ago today, I was 21, working at Home Depot, having a mental crisis. I’d cry before going into work because I’d see people my age on social media on yachts, in high-rises, with all these bags and purses, and think, ‘What am I doing wrong? How am I going to get successful?’ I was so miserable, still living with my mom. And a year later, I’ve won a very popular love show; I have an amazing boyfriend, an amazing support system, and offers from people who didn’t even know I existed. It’s crazy. People I used to follow on Instagram and TikTok are now reaching out saying they love me, and I’m like, “You follow me?”

Bryce: Even for me,  a lot of DJs I’ve respected for years, since I had music out before the show, are reaching out now that they know I’ve actually been producing and DJing this whole time. All these DJs I’ve wanted to work with my whole life, and now the platform’s there. As Trin said, we feel so grateful and blessed to get to live this together.

Trinity: Like meeting Kaskade. Someone you’d been listening to since middle school.

Bryce: When “I Remember” came out, I was maybe ten, eleven, twelve. Meeting Kascade was insane. He had to catch a flight, so I was the only one after the show who got to meet him. It was so special.

This season there seemed to be a quick rush for favorites to sign with agents and start building a life outside the villa. Do you think that changes how people approach the experience from the start?

Bryce: I think you can’t really fake it. People spot it. When I went in, I just opened my heart and didn’t know what the experience would bring. I wanted a relationship, wanted to be with somebody, and I was turning 30, so I opened up. That’s the only way to really go into it. It’s not an easy experience. It looks like fun, like we’re all on this island, but it’s actually very emotional, very anxiety-inducing. Every night you have no idea what’s going to happen. You’re under pressure, wondering if it’s your last day. When people leave, it feels like they died, because you don’t see them again until you leave too. When Sean left, we kept saying, “Sean, if you can hear us up there.” 

Trinity: And a lot of people think it’s all calculated, like people are playing to win. But there are cameras everywhere. You cannot talk about strategizing at all. That’s not even a thought process in there.

‍In the weeks since Fiji, their relationship has become something of a two-person enterprise, complete with sold-out nights, brand deals, commercials, and magazine covers, because yes, this is real life now. Since leaving the villa, Trinity has gained a staggering 3.27 million followers, and Bryce has crossed the 1.5 million mark. Their new visibility has begun translating into opportunities. At the time of writing this, Bryce had just wrapped two consecutive sold-out nights at Hollywood’s historic Avalon as part of his West Coast club tour, released his viral tech-house remix of Ty Dolla $ign’s song “Blasé,” and surpassed 500,000 monthly listeners. And Trinity recently starred as the Queen of Cash in a Verizon commercial that got 1 million likes on Instagram, and soon after, a Maybelline ad. While, yes, they managed to find love (and the $100,00 cash prize) on the island, they also discovered a new land of opportunity. There’s something particularly romantic about finding love and discovering that it has opened the door to an entirely new life. But also that the person you chose becomes, in a way, the person who leads you there.

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I’d love to know what has informed your view and idea of love growing up.

Bryce: I feel like my relationship with my mother, you know, not all forms of love are romantic. No matter what happened, having my mom’s love was crucial for my brother and me growing up. If I hadn’t had that, I don’t think I’d be as empathetic.

Trinity: I’d agree with that. Having that motherly love,  but for me, I didn’t grow up in a two-parent household. My mom dated some amazing guys, but I never had a genuine father figure who was there for my whole life. I think that shaped how badly I wanted to do love right. I want genuine love, something real with longevity, because I want a family. Seeing what my mom had, and what I didn’t have, and what other people had played a big part in how I choose a partner and what qualities I look for.

Your relationship was built on friendship first, and I think the audience could see every brick that was laid for your relationship. What did becoming friends first let you understand about each other?

Bryce: I’ve said before that this isn’t usually how I’ve built relationships in the past; maybe that’s why they didn’t work. We built our communication, learned how to talk to each other openly before anything got too emotional. So once the emotions got involved and things got more physical, we already had the tools to communicate properly and address things before they became bigger issues. I think a lot of the other couples really struggled with that, even getting to a depth of vulnerability. She and I got vulnerable early on, exposing our feelings, and it set the ground for everything. It’s like fertilizer, the plants grow.

Trinity: We definitely had a good base to start with. The attraction was already there on both ends, but we didn’t go off of straight attraction. We didn’t make out every night and do all these things, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but we took time. He got to know me, I got to understand him, he respected my boundaries, he was ready to learn who I was and make me comfortable. I think having a good friendship as a base makes the sexual chemistry even better, because you already have that vibe going. It’s a “friends to lovers” thing I always thought he was attractive.

Bryce: Yeah, I was like, “What is going on?” It was such an unnatural experience.

Trinity: You’re not used to it.

Love Island is one of the most unnatural things one can do in the pursuit of love, and maybe that’s precisely what makes it work. If you think about it, it’s kind of the perfect way to meet someone. No what-ifs, no wondering whether they’re actually interested, no 3-day text intermissions, and no usual escape routes. You arrive alone with none of your usual northstars here to guide you and see through the mist. Instead, there is one person, one shared environment, and an almost absurd amount of time to figure out whether something is there. Strip away the cameras, the challenges, the public notes, and the money, and underneath it all is a surprisingly simple proposition: what if, for once, you actually gave yourself the chance to see where something could go?

Do you think intimacy can stay authentic when you know it’s being observed?

Bryce: Yes, I do. After a while, you don’t forget the cameras are there, but you stop caring how you’re being perceived, because you realize there’s nothing to do but be yourself. I think in the beginning it was hard to feel natural, but about a week in, everybody was just who they were. It’s as real as a show can possibly get. Honestly, I don’t think any reality show gets as real as that.

What do you make of the idea that love can be measured, ranked, and rewarded?

Bryce: It’s weird, because there’s no empirical measurement for how much you love somebody. I think it’s all instinctual. If you’re empathetic, you can understand where people are at, and that empathy is the measurement. You could put factors together, but it’s mostly just feeling. When we watch our edits back, we cry looking at everything that happened and how beautiful the process of getting to know each other was.

As an audience, we’re aware it’s a show, but we forget you don’t know that while you’re in it. But the real reality about reality TV is that opinions are shaped by a chosen couple of hours of footage. This season there was a lot of “locker room talk” and “boys will be boys” commentary. Having lived through it and then watched it back, what did that bring to light about masculinity or the things men say when no one’s listening?

Bryce: Zach and I had a bromance, and a lot of that got blown out of proportion; there was a lot of homophobia in the response. A lot of guys can relate to the fact that when you’re on a sports team, or close with your friends, you make jokes, do funny stuff. 

Trinity: There have been multiple times on the show where some of us girls kissed each other in challenges, and nobody said anything homophobic about that. We’re comfortable in our sexuality, and it never got brought up. But when two men are jokingly having fun, genuinely loving the connection they have, people still have negative things to say; it’s a bit of a double standard. Melanie and I kissed in a challenge, and during Villa versus Casa we all kissed, and nobody said anything about the women-on-women kissing. Had it gone the other way, there’d have been a lot of discourse. I think people are just negative and selective, especially when they see people comfortable in their sexuality; that’s actually a breath of fresh air, men being okay joking around while still loving the women they’re with. 

As for the locker-room talk excuse, I’m not big on that, because I don’t say anything I don’t mean behind closed doors. Anything I say is intentional, so when guys use that as an excuse, I don’t agree with it. It doesn’t matter who you’re around; it doesn’t make it okay to be disrespectful about women or anyone else. If you’re comfortable saying something around your friends, you should be comfortable saying it around everybody. These are grown men who pay bills, not boys.

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This season’s most pivotal twist came with the start of Casa Amor, when the girls were getting ready for the infamous heart-rate challenge. Dressed in costumes, the girls were supposed to dance on the guys and see whose heart rate they could send racing. Instead, while the girls were still getting ready, the boys were quietly swept away to Casa Amor, where five new bombshells were waiting to dance on them. Back at the villa, the girls were livestreamed the entire interaction in real time. The twist was undeniably good television, but it was impossible to ignore the machinery behind Love Island. The show had essentially engineered a situation designed to provoke jealousy, insecurity, betrayal, and humiliation, then handed the audience a front-row seat. And while that is after all part of the bargain, who says it’s right? And maybe that’s what makes Love Island so compelling, and so dark.
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Do you ever wrestle with the morality of turning something as intimate as love or heartbreak into entertainment?

Trinity: For sure. I think you have to make humor out of everything. When we saw the Casa postcard, we joke about it now, how Melanie reacted, how Anaya was crying in the photo booth, and we’re teasing her about it. You have to find humor in it, because you can’t dwell on it; time moves so fast in the villa. You could be sad about something on Monday, and by Wednesday people are asking why you’re still talking about it. There’s so much going on that you have to move on. We’re all going to get embarrassed at some point on that show, moments where you think, “I shouldn’t have said that,” or, “Was that weird?” The best way through it is to joke about it and move on. Humor plays a big part in it.

What are you listening to, reading, or watching now that you have your phones back?

Trinity: I’ve been listening to his songs.

Bryce: Facts.

Trinity: What’s my favorite one?

Bryce: “Falling Back”?

Trinity: “Falling Back,” yeah, I love that one. I also really like that Prosper song, “Ecstasy.” It’s old, but it’s my favorite. It gives me LA vibes.

Okay, seriously, how relieved are you that you like Bryce’s music?

Trinity: So relieved. I was honestly scared, because I don’t know anything about house music. I didn’t even know if EDM and house were different things.

Bryce: EDM is the general broad category. House is a category within it.

Trinity: And he likes techno and all that too. I don’t know anything about it, so when I try to name categories I think are house, he’s like, “No, that’s not house, that’s something else.” When I listen to the tracks he puts me onto that actually are house, I get it. It’s a vibe, I love it. He says I like the older house sound, the more old-school stuff.

Is it fun to see each other in the real world now, off camera,  just working and living everyday life?

Trinity: I remember when he first started driving in the villa. I was like, “Wait, you know how to drive?” You forget people have lives outside of there. Seeing him drive, I thought, “This is weird, but hot.” Seeing new things, going out, having fun, dinner, clubs, having good times. It feels like a real, genuine relationship. It’s weird to see, because in the villa there’s only so much you can do, so experiencing real life with him is such a crazy feeling.

Have you made him breakfast?

Trinity: No, we’ve hung out constantly, but we haven’t cooked at all. I told him we need to go to the grocery store, because I’m losing my mind. I want a good home-cooked meal.

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And while Love Island hopes to mirror real life, there are a few things the villa can’t quite manufacture. It can give you all the ingredients for love: you can put two people in a paradise, give them every opportunity to fall for one another, and still, there’s no guarantee that they will. That part still has to happen somewhere between two people and requires a hearty amount of luck. What Love Island truly tries to capture is the initial spark in its purest form. And all that drama is just additive fun. And perhaps that’s why we endure all the small indignities of finding it. After all, there are some things in life worth chasing. And that’s love and money...but mostly love.

Do you think love is enough?

In Unison: Love is—

Bryce: —everything. More than enough. If you have that, you can work through any problem.

Trinity: I agree, a hundred percent. Without love, the world would be crazy.

Bryce: Everything’s solvable.

Trinity: Without love, what is there? What’s left?

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Photographed by Sam Dameshek

Styled by Christopher Campbell

Written by Bree Castillo

Hair: Jacob Aaron at Opus Beauty using SheaMoisture

Makeup:  Dee Carrion at Opus Beauty using Haus Labs

Grooming: Camille Ariane at EA Management. 

Flaunt Film: Wells Goltra

Super 8 Footage: Siena Cachón

Production Assistant: Ameen Kher and Maggie Zou

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