Following her elimination, Belle-A Walker is shedding light on things that fans didn’t see on Love Island USA.
Belle-A broke her silence on the Thursday, June 12, episode of “The Viall Files,” first addressing her decision not make out with any of the men prior to coupling up.
“I’ve always had this rule: no kissing on the first date. To be honest, I didn’t know what I was going to do until it really came down to it on the first date,” Belle-A admitted. “I have imagined because it is Love Island and I know that’s what I signed up for.”
Belle-A was proud of herself for sticking to her beliefs.
“I knew that there was a big possibility that that would arise,” she continued. “I just knew that I wanted to stay true to who I am and the boundaries that I’ve set — not just on the outside world — but even in this unfamiliar environment. I knew that I still had to be who I am in there too.”
According to Belle-A, the first days of filming were “a little wild,” adding, “Honestly, I think it was a really great opportunity to lay it down. Like, ‘Hey, this is who I am. This is what I’m about.’ Maybe they don’t understand it at that moment. But come find out why.”
Love Island USA follows a group of singles who have to pair off in order to stay in the show’s luxury villa in Fiji. The contestants — who are referred to as Islanders — live in isolation in a villa and are under constant video surveillance. They must be coupled up to remain on the show and to stand a chance to receive the prize of $100,000.
While Belle-A is out, Ace Greene, Austin Shepard, Charlie Georgiou, Chelley Bissainthe, Cierra Ortega, Huda Mustafa, Jeremiah Brown, Nicolas “Nic” Vansteenberghe, Olandria Carthen, Taylor Williams, Hannah Fields and Amaya Espinal are still looking for love on screen. (Yulissa Escobar was removed after past racist posts resurfaced.)
Keep scrolling for Belle-A’s confessions about unaired scenes from season 7:
Offscreen Chats With Nic
“I will never drag Nic for what he did. But he absolutely did make it seem like he might have picked me that night,” Belle-A said of Nic choosing to couple up with Cierra over her. “Also what the viewers haven’t really seen is the conversations that were shown between Nic and I.”
Belle-A claimed the “most basic of surface level conversations” are what aired, adding, “We had a deeper connection. He did have a solid connection between Cierra and I. I don’t blame him being stuck in between two 10s. Like this is not a real world problem for Nic. So I think that he was eating up.”
She continued: “I definitely called him out by saying, ‘I think it’s stroking your ego a little bit. I did encourage him to explore all the connections and test them to the deepest level. That’s exactly what he did. And ultimately he chose Cierra. I’m not a sore loser. I’m so happy for them. But was I being misled the entire process?”
Nic’s Past Romances
“Nic has been in an open relationship before. That was one of the first things he told me within our first conversation,” Belle-A revealed. “I don’t know why I didn’t raise a red flag to that right away. But I feel like him having Cierra and I [both interested] maybe gave him a little bit of a taste from his past.”
Unscreen Connections
It might come as a surprise but Belle-A didn’t only explore her chemistry with Nic. There was at least one other man who caught her eye — and it wasn’t Charlie.
“The real tea is Taylor and I actually had this undeniable chemistry that wasn’t ever shown. If anybody else saved me that night, it would have been Taylor. But for me, I am such a girl’s girl,” she noted. “And being a girl’s girl in that villa is something that’s very difficult to do because Olandria — she was my other girl. My loyalty to Olandria really, really got in the way of me fully exploring what could have been there with Taylor and I.”
Belle-A added: “Taylor always had Olandria on one hand and he would have me in the other. He would help me up and down the stairs. He would bring me coffee every single morning. He would ask if I wanted breakfast. He just had my back. Even during the recoupling announcement, he grabbed my hand and held on so tight and was like, ‘Everything’s going to be OK.’ The last thing he told me was, ‘I’m going to be checking up on you on the outside world.’ If it wasn’t Nick, it would have been Taylor.”
Contrary to popular belief, Amaya and Huda weren’t actually at odds over Ace.
“Something that the viewers didn’t get to see is that she owned her actions up and down like four or five times over to Amaya,” Bella-A noted. “I was there to feed into her delusions a little bit and just like to validate her because sometimes in the moment you don’t need somebody telling you that you’re just in the dead wrong.”
