Photo: Ben Symons/Peacock
As soon as Serena Page and Kordell Beckham looked into each other’s eyes Love Island in the United States The villa while dressed (coincidentally?) in matching neon green ensembles, viewers were mesmerized. TikTok paid tribute to the couple’s dark love, swooning over clips of Page styling Beckham’s hair and dramatic montages of the pair’s arguments. Over the course of the show’s sixth season, its most popular and acclaimed to date, the couple faced a roller coaster of ups and downs: Page thinking Beckham, 22, wasn’t “intellectually stimulating” enough after he expressed interest in a Cheez-It sponsorship, their subsequent breakup and reconciliation, and Beckham’s ill-advised “connection-finding” streak with bombshell Daia during Casa Amor. And yet they persevered, eventually emerging victorious and taking home a shared $100,000 prize (plus a possible Cheez-It payout, if Beckham’s Instagram followers are any indication).
Pretty good, considering the duo never thought they’d win. “I thought it was either JaNa and Kenny or Kendall and Nicole,” Beckham says. “Even when it got to the final two, I thought it was had “We’re Leah and Miguel. We don’t know what the people outside watching us think of us, but it turns out it’s a good thing.”
You are the second black couple in history earn Love Island in the United StatesThis is an important matter, because there has been complaints in the past about the show’s voters give to people of color A raw dealWhat does your victory mean to you?
Serena Page: I love this. I’m very pro-black, so this means a lot to me. A big thank you to the community for supporting us and believing in us.
You just got your phones back. How does it feel to see the response your story has received online?
ESP: I would definitely use the term “outdated,” but in a good way.
I know you’re in a bubble on the show, but have you ever gotten a sense of what people think of you?
ESP: We started to get an idea of what we thought of ourselves when we got to the final four. Personally, I didn’t know what America thought of us because we didn’t have the most typical of The Island of Love journey or the smoothest sailing. I was like, Maybe they’re sick of our asses.
Why did you think another couple would win?
Kordell Beckham: With JaNa and Kenny, their progression was crazy, like they had a real little love experience. Kenny really loves this woman and JaNa really loves this man. Kendall and Nicole, it was a love story too. Even Aaron and Kaylor, since they were boyfriend and girlfriend, I thought they would be there at the end.
Were you both surprised that they weren’t?
ESP: Just a little bit. I feel like Aaron wasn’t very honest about his experience at Casa, and I knew it wouldn’t resonate. Nobody likes a liar. I love Aaron to death, but that’s probably what drove America away.
It’s like he forgot that people at home were watching him or that there were cameras around. Is that easy to do, though?
Database: The second day, I literally forgot that there were cameras everywhere. There are times when you see one and you think: Oh shit, there’s a camera right therebut most of the time you forget about them completely.
Kordell, you seemed to forget that there was even a prize for winning The Island of Love.
Database: Yeah, I forgot about winning. I didn’t realize until Ariana said, “Now, we’re going to announce the winners of this season of The island of love,” and I was like, ‘Oh, shit!’ I was so locked in.
ESP: But that’s how he is.
Database: I can often be in my own world.
There is a popular tweet who says: “Kordell really came to The Island of Love “I was a boy and I will leave as a man.” Do you think that’s true?
Database: That’s the truth. I’m not even going to sit here and lie. I came in as a boy, even though my mindset was already mature. Everything I did on the show was something I would naturally do, but I feel like I left as a man, because there’s always room to grow. I grew in ways I didn’t know I could grow.
I also saw lots of discussions about why there is so much avocado toast.
Database: That was my first question when I got there! Everyone was talking about avocado toast. I don’t even care about avocados. But Serena eats avocados, so I thought, You know what? Let me make this little avocado toast and I’ll try it myself.. And I have to say, it’s pretty good. But I thought: Is it a The Island of Love thing or does everyone in the world really like avocado toast? Honestly, I do not know.
ESP: It’s also one of the easiest breakfast dishes to make, especially because you have to prepare for the day. You can’t spend the whole day preparing a buffet.
Database: I would say I made a real breakfast for Serena every day. Even on our bad days, I would always make bacon and eggs, pancakes, or French toast.
Kordell, you made a few jokes about being blind and some people online wondered what was up with your glasses. You just didn’t want to wear them?
Database: I have glasses, but they’re the wrong prescription. I was trying to get my new prescription before the show, but they said it would take two months because my eyesight had gotten worse or my lenses would be thicker. I thought, “I don’t have much time,” so I went to the two pairs of glasses I had so far and managed to break them both. One pair had one arm gone and the other pair had half of it broken. I wore them sometimes, but I tried to push my hair down to cover where the arm stopped so it wouldn’t be seen.
How much time do you have to prepare for the show, from getting the call that you’ve been officially cast to boarding the plane?
ESP: It depends on the person. It can take a few weeks or a few days. However, the process is long enough that you can start preparing in case you do get through it.
Database: Yeah, it was always like that: “You never know when you’re going to go. Do whatever you need to do now so you have enough time.”
Have you talked about what’s next for you both? Are you going to have a long-distance relationship? Is one of you going to move?
ESP: We definitely talked about it at the villa. We’re both from Texas, but I’ve been in LA for a year now and convinced him to move there, so you’ll be seeing us a lot more often.
Database: I tried to leave Texas for a long time, but I had plans to move to Arizona, Miami, or Vegas. LA wasn’t on my radar, but I met her, so now it’s on my radar.
Your romance has had its ups and downs, not to mention the pressures that come with being on a reality TV show. How do you keep events like the one that happened with Kordell on Casa from coming back to haunt your relationship?
Database: Everything that’s happened has made us stronger. We don’t really think about the past. We joke about it. It’s become something that we can both laugh about and enjoy, and say, “Hey, that happened, but look at us now.”
We found out during the final that there is a Love Island in the United States reunion coming up on August 19th. Do you already have questions for the others?
ESP: We just We have our phones. I haven’t even had time to catch up. Maybe once I do a deep dive into social media I’ll have questions. But for now, we’re having fun.
This story has been updated to correct a factual error.