“Love Island USA” contestant Vasana Montgomery has been removed before the Season 8 premiere after a weekend video surfaced showing her using a racist slur while singing along. Her exit arrives amid similar cast upheaval that followed prior reports of contesta
For the second straight year, “Love Island USA” is heading into a new season with an abrupt reminder that past words can catch up fast.
Vasana Montgomery, a 25-year-old business owner from Oregon, is no longer among the 12 contestants announced for Season 8. The change was confirmed on Sunday. May 31. after a video circulated over the weekend showing Montgomery appearing to use a racist slur while singing along to a song. The Season 8 premiere is set for Tuesday, June 2.
The timing is jarring: the cast was revealed just days earlier, on Thursday, May 28. With the premiere still days away, Montgomery’s removal signals yet another upheaval before viewers even meet the full lineup.
Montgomery is from Beaverton. Oregon. and her TikTok profile describes her as a “Thai/Lao girl.” In her “Love Island” intro. she said she was the “whole package” because she owned a business and lived alone. She also described herself using a world-map reference about her “type. ” telling viewers: “If you were to ask my friends what my type is. they’d show you the world map.”.
Her “Love Island” bio adds that she is an esthetician school graduate. She owns studios in Sale, with businesses operated by tattoo artists, lash technicians, makeup artists, and others specializing in cosmetic treatments.
The situation echoes the turbulence “Love Island USA” faced a year earlier. when Season 8 is once again playing out under the glare of questions about contestants’ past online activity. In Season 7. which aired from June 2025 to July 2025. two contestants left during filming. with little acknowledgement of their departures in the episodes.
In both cases, the unexplained exits were tied to prior online activity involving racial slurs. Starting cast member Yulissa Escobar exited with limited acknowledgement. The narrator. Iain Stirling. told viewers: “Yulissa has left the villa.” Before the show premiered. backlash followed after clips of Escobar using a racial slur on a podcast surfaced. She later posted a written apology “for using a word I had no right in using.”.
Weeks later, Cierra Ortega—who had been in a front-running couple with Nic Vansteenberghe—was also removed. Stirling said Ortega “has left the villa due to a personal situation.” In the week leading up to Ortega’s exit. screenshots of alleged recent Instagram posts circulated showing the then 25-year-old contestant using a racist slur against people of Asian descent to negatively refer to her eyes.
Ortega left the villa and then posted a nearly five-minute “accountability video.” In it, she apologized to “the entire Asian community” and said she “had no idea that the word held as much pain, as much harm, and came with the history that it did, or I never would have used it.”
Taken together, the sequence is stark: Year after year, the show’s cast announcements are followed by sudden removals connected to racist slur use—first surfacing in past audio or social posts, then erupting into public backlash as premieres approach.
Love Island USA Vasana Montgomery Olandria Carthen Season 8 premiere Peacock racist slur Beaverton Oregon Season 7 controversies Yulissa Escobar Cierra Ortega Iain Stirling Nic Vansteenberghe