Love Island All-Stars' Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu has spoken out about the heartbreaking bullying she suffered as a teen and the death threats she has received since leaving the Love Island villa. The 30-year-old actress and reality star from Loughton is currently in a relationship with Curtis Pritchard, 29, after they fell for each other on the recent All Stars version of the ITV dating show which finished last month.
Ekin-Su has been on two series of Love Island, and was also a housemate on Celebrity Big Brother last year. She opened up on a podcast with internet sensation Jamie Laing about how she was bullied as a child, and has received death threats - particularly since leaving the Big Brother house.
She said on Jaime's Great Company podcast: “Even now, probably people hate me for no reason. That's fine. Hate is an emotion. You’ve only got to worry when no one has no feelings towards you.”
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Ekin-Su admits that she’s had to work hard at keeping this positive attitude after the past two years especially after leaving Celebrity Big Brother and being booed. The trolls sent death threats and she ended up seeking help after locking herself away in her flat.
“Obviously, there was a lot of hate going on,” she told Jamie. “Coming out to a lot of hate and death threats and people saying, you know, like, ‘you don't deserve to be alive’. ‘I'm going to come and find you and kill you’, like all these really nasty things.
"‘You deserve to be bullied’. It is triggering. It triggers things. And I was in my flat, and I was just sitting on the floor and just burst into tears for a good three hours, just crying.
“Then I remember having this phone call, and someone said, ‘Ekin please speak to a therapist. I'm shaking talking about it, but I said no. And they were like, no, you need to speak to a therapist. You've not left your flat, you're not eating, you're not you're not yourself’.
“I had my therapy session, and after that one session, I kind of they were like, ‘Right. You need to take yourself away for a week self-care. You need to switch off your phone and realise that you haven't done anything wrong’. Like the feeling is temporary. It's not real.
“It's horrible. I never thought I'd be in that place. I always thought, oh my God. Like when people feel this low, surely, they can get back up, until it happens to you. It is a very dark place, and I wouldn't wish that upon anyone, anyone, whoever you are."
She received backlash when she left the Big Brother house in 2024, with her family pleading for kindness on social media prior to her departure. In the Love Island All Stars season, she was at the centre of a lot of drama involving fellow Essex girl Elma Pazar.
