In case you haven’t heard, there’s a fresh season of “Love Island USA” currently underway in Fiji.
While many are tuning in to watch the latest drama unfold in the villa between a set of twenty-somethings tasked with finding love while clad in barely-there swimsuits, there’s an entirely different group keeping up through the discourse and the fan content online.
We’re talking layered threads analyzing the social dynamics at play, skits set against near-perfect green screens of the vibrantly decorated villa reenacting iconic scenes, and full-on fictional characters like one creator who imagines if the cast had a slightly more “hood”-adjacent islander. Then there’s TV writer Mike Gauyo, who has become so convincing in his skits as a “Love Island producer” behind the scenes that he’s had to repeatedly clarify he’s not actually a producer on the series.
“It was all meant to just be something funny, and like a funny outlet to air out my own frustrations with the show, but then it kind of took off,” he told theGrio over Zoom on Thursday, June 25.
He said the idea came after seeing viewers increasingly scrutinize what producers were doing behind the scenes this season.
“So I just had the idea to come up with a character that is a producer on the show, and then present it on social media as skits, so it would be a way to update my audience on what happened that episode, while also dispensing just like funny tidbits of my own by building my own character and just baking myself into the show as a producer,” he continued.
In one recent video, he poked fun at islander Sincere mispronouncing the “o” in “epitome,” acting as though he was the producer feeding him the word, only for it to go spectacularly wrong. In his latest—he somehow manages to make one for every episode, God bless—he reacts to the domino effect of the girls receiving photographic evidence of their increasingly shaky connections by way of a postcard sent from their current matches off at the infamous Casa Amor. One by one, each girl spots her partner in a compromising position with his Casa Amor match before promptly falling apart like a scene from a Victorian novel, complete with fainting couches. They have no idea how good they are for television.
View on Threads
In the skit, Gauyo looks around in disappointment and mild concern, snacking on chips as he reminds the women that there are brand-new boys in the villa actively trying to get their attention. Moments later, he’s over at Casa Amor, where the guys are so wrapped up in their new connections they don’t even notice they have their own incriminating postcard sitting in the mailbox. Pulling directly from the fan discourse he so cleverly folds into his videos, Gauyo calls islanders into confessionals and even refers to castmate Parmida as “Parmesan”—a nod to the unfortunate autocorrect that has become an inside joke among viewers.
Under his videos, some fans are clearly in on the joke. Others seem genuinely convinced he has influence over the series, demanding he intervene in certain storylines. It doesn’t hurt—or perhaps it does, depending on how you look at it—that beloved host Ariana Madix has liked some of his posts, lending a little extra credibility to the bit.
The series has become such a hit that Gauyo is now developing the concept into a mockumentary about producing a reality television show behind the scenes. Clearly, there’s an audience for it.
Part of why Gauyo’s skits land so well is because while he’s a fan of “Love Island,” he’s also a student of the industry. Of Haitian descent and hailing from Massachusetts, his writing credits include Netflix’s “Ginny & Georgia,” HBO’s “Insecure,” and “Send Help” while his production background includes the MTV Video Music Awards and “American Idol.”
After the writers’ strike, he hit a lull in work that forced him to think more intentionally about how he wanted to expand his voice across television and entertainment.
“And one of the ways that I was able to garner some attention early on in my writing career was through social media,” he explained.
Despite how dedicated he’s become to his “role,” he’s relatively new to the fandom. He started watching last season when breakout couple Olandria Carthen and Nic Vansteenberghe—known affectionately online as Nicolandria—captured viewers’ hearts. He decided to move beyond simply commenting on the episodes as a way to showcase his creativity, put himself back out there and, perhaps most importantly, find some joy again.
“Part of the reason I even started getting back on social media… was like just family stuff was happening. My dad had a stroke a couple of years ago, that’s kind of like greatly impacted our family.”
He continued, “I kind of really fell into… depression… and social media being that light… that place of joy where I can go and be silly… getting over that cringe and having fun with it has really brought a joy to my life… I look forward to posting… because it takes away from the depression and or pain.”
And to be clear, Gauyo isn’t punching down on the show or its producers. Quite the opposite.
He understands exactly what goes into making a reality series of this scale, recalling 21-hour days while working on “American Idol.” He knows what it takes to sift through more than 24 hours of footage every day and shape it into compelling television without the benefit of a script.
“As someone who has been on that side of reality television, in terms of just being behind the scenes and knowing how much work it takes to put a series like that together,” he said, adding, “I know how grueling that schedule can be… So I have nothing but respect for those producers and all the staff that are behind the scenes of a show like… ‘Love Island.’”
Every season brings its share of online discourse, especially as the cast has become increasingly diverse. This year has been no different. With well over eight Black women appearing throughout the season alongside several Black men, Asian, Hispanic and multiracial contestants, conversations around racial dynamics, colorism, misogyny and desirability politics have become as much a part of the viewing experience as the recouplings themselves.
“I think those are important conversations to have. So I love that they get brought up,” he said. “I love that people are definitely using their First Amendment rights to speak up.”
“‘Love Island’ is one large social experiment,” the TV writer continued. “So when you put different types of people… in essentially what’s like just an incubator, and you turn on a camera, then it kind of brings on a lot of these conversations… about how people behave.”
He added, “Sometimes… they’re like, ‘Oh, wow… I didn’t know that I was presenting in that way.’ So hopefully some folks learn from themselves.”
At the same time, Gauyo reminds viewers what they’re actually watching. Many of the contestants are young people whose life experiences may be relatively limited, making the villa one of the first times they’re interacting with people from dramatically different backgrounds and perspectives.
“There are… individuals that are involved who are being asked to show their true selves… and then you have the producers of the show who are supposed to then take that and build out a story,” he explained.
When he’s not filming skits within hours of episodes airing on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, Gauyo is juggling an increasingly busy career in Hollywood. He has several projects in development that he couldn’t reveal just yet, but his face lit up talking about them.
He’s also the founder of The Black Boy Writes and The Black Girl Writes mentorship program, which helps guide aspiring television writers. Launched in 2020 during the racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd, the organization’s name is a play on words referring to both writing and civil rights.
He said it means, “The right to exist, the right to take up space, the right to create.”
He added, “That’s our mission statement, and a lot of what we do is anchored in activism and just the mere fact that being Black and existing in the world is activism.”
For others out there who aspire to be social media stars, TV writers, or some mix of it all, Gauyo said in a word: embrace the era of the multihypnate.
“In today’s current climate, you have to do multiple things,” he said. “You have to be able to be open to doing multiple things, and expand yourself in ways you haven’t before. I’ve really been enjoying that, and I think that, you know, it’s something that if you want to get to where you want to be, and beyond that, you have to be open to seeing yourself in different ways.”
