“I’ve lost every friend I had.”
Love Island winner Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu has opened up about life a year after appearing in the ITV dating show, and revealed the most heartbreaking aspect of it all.
Since leaving the series, Ekin-Su said that she has lost all of the friends she had before her appearance on the show and now finds it hard to trust people.
The 28 year old was crowned the winner of the 2022 series with her partner Davide Sanclimenti, garnering 63.7% of the public vote.
Now, Ekin-Su has opened up about her time after the show, telling Cosmopolitan UK: “I’ve lost every friend I had.”
Saying that she only has one friend remaining, Ekin-Su revealed that fame hasn’t been all it’s cracked up to be and she now sees people’s “true colours.”
“People just want to be your friend because of your status, and it’s a hard industry to trust,” she continued.
“People I’d known for 10 years who were in my life… Selling stories is not very nice. I wouldn’t do that to someone.”
While she did note that she’s happier this way, there are people she had to cut out of her life once she left the villa and sometimes a small circle is the best.
Ekin-Su recently visited her home country of Turkey with the British Red Cross in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake that killed almost 60,000 people.
She made the trip back in March with her boyfriend, Davide, but has since revealed how “moving” yet “traumatising” the experience was.
Appearing on Good Morning Britain, Ekin told Susanna Reid and Ed Balls that she met many children who had lost their parents and other family members in the tragedy.
She remembered one little girl who lost her mum and said she really struggled to leave her behind.
The four-year-old called Ekin ‘mum’ and it really affected her.
While on the show she said: “I would love to take her.
“It was traumatising, the whole experience. But once you bring one home you want to help them all.
“I really just want to raise awareness. We don’t know how lucky we are to be in the UK.”
