Love Island USA Season 6 Winner Serena Page Talks New Spinoff, PPG, and Relationship with Kordell Beckham

Yahoo

7 days ago

Kendall Bessent
Serena Page doesn't think she's famous. The Love Island USA season 6 winner gawks at the idea. But from an outsider's point of view, that might not be the case.
It's a rare sunny day in Los Angeles, a reprieve from the regular June Gloom. Guests sitting poolside at the Four Seasons Beverly Wilshire turn their heads during our photo shoot, trying to decipher who might be in their presence. A woman having lunch with a friend walks over to Page, gushing about how she was 'her favorite on the show' and asks for a selfie.
Page might not be traditionally famous, but she is a modern type of famous, a new level of celebrity that operates somewhere between actor, influencer, and socialite. She may not believe in that fame, but the reality star has become familiar enough on our screens that she's still stopped for selfies.
'I feel like the whole cast has been on autopilot,' Page tells Teen Vogue about her journey reentering the real world after the villa. She simultaneously orders a singular glass of champagne as we sit to talk — reminiscent of their drinking allowance of six ounces daily while on the popular dating show. 'We've just been moving and going with the motions and I think we're finally starting to settle down and be like, 'Whoa, guys. What is really going on?' I think the spinoff definitely woke that feeling up, too.'
Page entered the Love Island villa last June with two thousand followers on Instagram — she currently has over two million. She refers to her followers as supporters instead of fans, because they've changed her life entirely. The 25-year-old became a fan-favorite while on the smash Peacock series, and daily reminders that her world has evolved continues to leave her in constant disbelief.
'My brother called me, he's in Nigeria right now,' she says. 'Some people went up to him and were like, 'Aren't you Serena's brother?''
season 6 was an anomaly of sorts, an interruption of the American iteration's status quo. For years, Love Island UK has been deemed the superior installment in the Love Island franchise with steady global viewership. Love Island USA launched in 2019 and was seen as the original series' step-sibling. While there was a quiet, loyal fanbase for the show during its first five seasons, something extraordinary was ignited when Page and her fellow cast members appeared on our screens.
Applauded for their outspoken personalities, witty comebacks, and genuineness, season 6 became the most-watched original streaming series in America during its run. And what pulled everyone in was Page and her friend group; self-dubbed as PPG (the Powerpuff Gang), Page, Leah Kateb, and JaNa Craig became standout stars all summer long.
'That's been the most heartwarming piece of this entire experience. From start to finish, people have loved me for me and not a character that I'm portraying or a role that I'm playing,' Page says of her newfound success after going on reality television — an experience that could've ended differently if America hadn't fallen in love with her. 'I am very glad that people got to know my personality and who I am before anything else because I do have other dreams and aspirations in the industry.'
'I have a connection with my supporters,' she continues. 'They feel like we're best friends. I run into people all the time. I was just in Chicago and these girls, we made eye contact in the restroom and they're like, 'Serena?' I said, 'Hey, bestie.' It's just immediate, they always come up to me, they're like, 'I feel like we're best friends.' And I'm like, 'Because we are.''
Page admits that, of course, it isn't possible for her supporters to know every part of her, but jokes that they got a very good glimpse at her personality during those six weeks in Fiji.
She was able to leave the dating competition series — which many are calling a 24-hour surveillance social experiment — relatively unscathed. Still, Page struggled with the idea of returning to reality television, especially after Peacock approached the season 6 cast about doing a first-of-its-kind spinoff series.
'Seeing how many women — and specifically Black women — resonated with me, genuinely keeps me pushing,' she says. 'There will be times where I'm like, 'I just want to disappear for two months,' but I'm like, 'No.''
Page, the rest of PPG, their significant others, and a few other castmates from season six will be featured and starring in Love Island: Beyond the Villa. Peacock announced the show earlier this spring with a July 13 premiere date.
'There were so many ideas tossed around,' Page recalls of the initial process. 'Originally, we were all going to go to Vegas and they wanted us to stay in one house — we were not rocking with that.'
Speaking on behalf of PPG and PPGM (PPG Men), Page says that they weren't all into the idea of manufactured drama. 'Honey, Mama's tired,' she laughs. 'Mama is putting the drama on hold. I can't.'
Page says producers returned with a secondary idea to send the group out of the country, but they were still not sold. The former Islanders were ready to reenter their real lives and focus on their budding careers. The PPG trio and their partners, Kordell Beckham, Miguel Harichi, and Kenny Rodriguez, had all obtained a slew of large-scale sponsorships and brand deals. They were now certified influencers and television personalities with a lot to gain.
Once the producers mentioned the possibility of a docu-follow, the girls decided to consider the offer. 'It was all or nothing,' Page says about PPG's decision to do the show. 'We talked and we said either we all are going to do it or none of us are going to do it. Kordell was the one from the beginning you could tell never really wanted to do it, so I'm glad that he got booked because he really be chilling. My man is relaxed. He doesn't like all the extraness.'
Beckham will only be a recurring guest on the spinoff series, as he is set to star in two upcoming projects, one of which is an original scripted series from Keke Palmer's network KeyTV. At first, fans were upset after finding out he would not be a full-time member of the spinoff cast.
'He was like, 'I will be there for you whenever you need me,'' Page says about his appearances on the show. 'But he wants to prioritize his acting. And as you know, from our first conversation he let me know that was what he wanted to do.'
PPG, on the other hand, had a huge decision to make: would they return to the world of reality TV so soon? 'We sat down and we talked about it because after the show, it was a lot,' Page says, dragging out the end of her sentence. 'It was a lot for everyone with the amount of eyes and opinions on us, the amount of think pieces. So we were like, 'Do we want to go through that again? Is that something that we want to put ourselves through mentally?' It was a no for a long time. And then the more conversations we had about it and the more we talked about the reason why we're here, what our supporters want to see, things of that nature, we were like, 'You know what? Let's suck it up. It is what it is. Let's try it out, just like we tried it out last summer. If we hate it, we're never doing it again.'
Page calls this the 'doing it for the plot' era of her life. And new plot points include taking on the challenge of adapting to a Kardashian-esque style of filming after only being familiar with a Big Brother-ish approach. 'Filming was the polar opposite of when we were in the villa,' she says. 'You see the cameras [when filming the spinoff]. When we're in the villa, they're mainly hidden. You forget they're there.'
'I show a different side of myself on the spin-off. I open up about my anxiety,' she continues. 'I think everything switching in my life so fast triggered that. I'm showing more of a vulnerable side on the show because that's something I always kept close to my chest, but it has become a big part of my life now… When I was younger, I didn't tell anyone that I had anxiety,' Page continues. 'I just want to normalize that it's okay. Everybody has it. I still don't consider myself a celebrity, but everyone, even your favorite influencer — you don't know what they're going through behind closed doors.'
Page admits that posting on social media can sometimes feel like a no-win situation. She doesn't want to constantly post her 'depressing sh*t' on Instagram or Snapchat, but she also doesn't want to pretend that everything in her life is perfect. While it's something Page chose for herself, being constantly perceived by millions of people isn't something the human brain can easily digest.
Love Island USA audiences seem to have heightened parasocial relationships with the contestants, because viewers get to see so much of them — from the mundane to the major clashes — and with America asked to vote on their 'favorite' and 'least favorite' cast members, we witness in real time who is most well-received and who is most scrutinized. And even though she won her season, while talking to Page, she still seems hyper-aware of everything she says, as if filtering her words with the cameras still in mind.
The 25-year-old has chosen to open up her life to the world once more with this spinoff, even though she knows the lows of reality TV well: viewers obsessively nitpicking at her facial expressions, body language, and her words. But her new life — overflowing with the highs of reality TV — is a product of that fixation. Audiences simply love when she's on their screens. 'I just want to make everyone happy, especially my supporters, because I wouldn't be where I am without them,' Page says.
Love Island: Beyond the Villa will follow a select group of season 6 Islanders around Los Angeles as they navigate their careers, newfound fame, evolving friendships, and complex relationships. Page says that the cast dynamic has changed a lot — mostly because they now aren't forced to sleep in one large room together.
'We are all a family,' she says. 'At the end of the day, you fight with your family, you argue with your family. You might have fallen out for a year or so, but we all went through that experience together that nobody else will understand. I think there will always be a level of love in our hearts for each other no matter what. I feel like you can tell there's always love there.'
Weekly episodes begin mid-July, adding even more content to the already-stacked Love Island schedule, as Love Island USA season 7 will just be wrapping up.
From the moment Page left the villa she's been booking campaigns, from brand deals with Dunkin' to Beyoncé's haircare line Cécred, and has been engulfed in filming for the spinoff. Just hours after our photoshoot, she'll board a red-eye to Fiji to appear in an episode of LI's weekly recap show Aftersun. But when she returns from the place that started it all, Page is ready for her schedule to clear up so she can focus on her next big goal: a haircare line of her own.
'It's something I haven't been able to pour into because of how busy I've been,' she says. 'I told myself after this spinoff, I'm going to sit my ass down, lock in, and get this out because it is one of my passions. I have been obsessed with hair since I was a kid. I remember braiding my Bratz hair, I learned how to cornrow on the little Bratz dolls.'
Page understands how difficult it is to build a business from the ground up. She's a perfectionist who wants whatever she puts out to be quality products that can actually be used on a daily basis. 'It needs to be the sh*t. It needs to be the best stuff that's out.'
A haircare line feels incredibly on-brand following Page's time on Love Island. She was the star of many a Black girls' moodboard during the summer of 2024, thanks to her various updo styles of her knotless boho braids. Viewers at home applauded Page for wearing her braids for not only showing their versatility, but sheer representation. It's more common to see Black women wearing straight hair on-screen, reality TV or not.
'It makes me cry because I feel like it's something that was not accepted as much,' Page says. 'As someone who watched Love Island so much, I watched my sisters come on there with wigs, and the thing is, I never bashed them because at the end of the day, you get approached differently as a Black woman, this is known. When you have braids, you get certain attention from men versus when you have a wig on your head, you get a different amount of attention, especially when you're going on a show that [stars] primarily white people.'
'The braids? Honey, you're going home,' she continues, while laughing. 'You're out. It was a decision, and honestly, I didn't think that I would get put on the show solely for that reason, because I did my interviews in wigs.'
Page says she wore a different hairstyle for each of her interviews for the show. '[The producers] were like, 'You need to wear the same hair you have in this interview to the island,'' she recalls. 'And then as I'm getting ready, I was like, 'I'm not about to fight with my lace all summer.' The first time I saw braids on Love Island was Justine [from Love Island Games]. That's actually the reason I wore them, because I was like, 'Justine wore them and she did the damn thing… I know they told me to wear this wig, but I'm about to risk it. I'm going to go get these braids.''
After arriving in Fiji for season 6, Page remembers meeting the Peacock team for the first time in person. They said she 'looked different.'
'I went back to my room and cried because I was like, 'I'm not going on,'' she says. 'It was nerve-wracking. It's nice to know how well it was perceived when I got out [the villa]. I didn't even know when I was in there that people were seeing my different styles as a thing. That's me on the regular. I hate having one style for too long, so I would always just switch it up. I was getting bored with my braids in the villa. I almost took them out and wore my 'fro because I was so sick of them.'
Page's hair wasn't the only hot topic of conversation. She often did Beckham's hair while on the show, another authentic aspect of their journey that fans became obsessed with. 'Man, I was doing his hair all the time,' she says with a smile. 'And to this day, he'll go get his hair done professionally because I'll be busy, and he'll come home and be like, 'Baby, I don't like it. Can you redo my hair?' He just got a free hairstylist for the rest of his life.'
It's been a full year since Page and Beckham coupled up in the villa. Roughly a month after leaving Fiji — with $50,000 each — Beckham asked Page to be his girlfriend. She says that their relationship outside of the villa genuinely feels the same.
'Once we locked in [inside the villa], it was like, 'Wait a minute. I [feel like] we've been dating for years now,'' Page says. 'So then after getting out, it just continued. There was no shift. There was no adjusting. Besides the fact that people are writing think pieces about our relationship — people being like, 'Oh, she hates him.' They love that one, honey. They don't like a woman who doesn't do the chasing.'
Page's dating style on the show was perceived by many as 'uninterested,' when Page says she was just safeguarding her emotions and slowly assessing what a real-world relationship with Beckham would look like. That's what made them work.
'I feel like we're still in the honeymoon phase and I can't believe that it's been a year now,' she says. 'It feels like we're on cloud nine. He moved to LA almost immediately and we've been attached at the hip.'
The rising star gives kudos to anyone attempting to publicly date on a show like Love Island. Between intensified emotions and constant kissing, comfort zones don't exist in the villa. But without the show, Page knows that she and Beckham would likely not have met — even though she does believe that eventually, even without Love Island, they would've still ended up together.
Beckham is her person — and his lessened presence on the spinoff made her feel even more apprehensive about the project.
'At [first] he was going to do it with me. I had fully confirmed, signed the contracts and everything, and then he got booked,' she recalls. 'I was very proud of him, but I was sad and it made me very anxious about filming because I was like, 'Damn, I'm going to be alone.' Granted, I have my girls, Leah and JaNa, but their men were on the show doing it with them. There were a lot of times where I was like, 'Damn, I don't know. We're supposed to be navigating our relationship, but you're about to be in a whole different state. What am I going to do?''
'But he did an amazing job reassuring me,' she adds. 'He was like, 'Any crumb of a chance I can get, I'm going to be on that screen with you.' And honestly, you're going to see a lot more of him than you would've expected. It's maybe [only] a handful of scenes that I've done without him. Y'all will get to see some behind-the-scenes of me and him working together. Y'all get to see dates. He even ends up coming to Miami, too.'
Page's bond with PPG, even a year later, has set a new standard for reality television friendships. Their dynamic post-show is still grounding her, especially through this new journey they're embarking on together.
'In the villa, everything was truly so authentic and we were so open and honest with each other and we knew so much about each other,' she says. 'These are my sisters, that's my man. So coming off the show and being able to connect with their families and see the people who raised them has been beautiful… All of our parents call each other their bonus daughters. My favorite thing post-show is learning about their homes, their family life, and just becoming a part of it. I'm taking Leah and JaNa to Houston to go to Cowboy Carter because they weren't able to make it to my birthday last year. I'm going to show them around my city… JaNa is taking us to Hawaii, that's going to be happening this summer.'
While the girls are living their best lives this summer, another crop of Gen Zers are currently sequestered in the eclectic Love Island villa in Fiji. Comparisons to season 6 were expected, but viewers are prodding at the season 7 contestants with almost side-by-side critiques. When asked if she's watching the new season, Page admits that she's mostly tuned in through clips on social media.
'It doesn't hit the same because I was a Love Island watcher,' she says. Is it like working at a fast food joint and never being able to enjoy a meal there again? She agrees wholeheartedly. 'Now I know the inner workings. I know what you have to do. I know when the pauses happen. I know when I see poor editing. I'm watching from a different lens now… But I'm a reality television watcher. I'm going to tune in. And there are two beautiful Black girls.'
She's referring to Olandria Carthen and Chelley Bissainthe, who the internet has already deemed the 'Serena and JaNa' of the season. But Page doesn't want there to be any replications in the new cast — or pressure to duplicate a friendship like PPG.
'We should just give it the benefit of the doubt,' she says. 'The women are beautiful — I'm not really checking for the men at all; I couldn't care less what they got going on.'
'Every season has friendship,' she adds. 'It may be a duo. One of my favorite duos was Justine and Cely when I watched their season. Sometimes there are trios, sometimes it's a group of four and they're best friends, they're sticking it out. I don't think we were anything new when it comes to that. I think people just resonated with us a lot.'
No matter how you look at it, Serena Page has transformed a stellar season of reality TV into a new future for herself. Going on Love Island might seem frivolous, but it's helped her confront the most difficult parts of herself — and also given her a platform she would've never had without it.
'I am extremely stubborn,' she says, reflecting on how the reality show has changed her. 'I am a 'I can do everything by myself' type of person. It's always been extremely hard for me to admit I need help. But coming off the show, I have been forced to, because if not, I will have a panic attack every other day. I can't handle all of this. I'm very grateful for the show and all the stress because it's at least forced me to acknowledge that about myself. It's been a weight lifted off my shoulders.'
This new chapter in her career also allows her to explore and experiment with freedom, in ways most young people with a traditional 9-to-5 cannot. 'I want to be able to say that I tried any and everything, whether I hated it or loved it, I tried it,' Page says. 'To the point where when I'm old and crusty, I can lie back and say, 'There's not one thing I regret. There's not one thing that I wish I would've done.' Hence why I moved to LA before I even had money. I up and left my job when I first got a promotion, to go on Love Island — I just be doing sh*t. I tell people, 'I live life for the plot because you never know what could happen.''
'Having a partner who is also in the same situation as me and who has the same mindset is perfect,' she continues. 'Kordell, he's just like, 'Whatever you want to do, we are doing it.' I can't wait for the adventures that we're going to go on. I can't even imagine the experiences that he and I are going to have just solely based on how free we are now.'
Photographer Kendall Bessent
Styling Courtesy of Matthew Reisman and Reginald Reisman at The Only Agency
Styling Alani Blair
Hair Davontae' Washington at The Wall Group
Makeup Kenya Alexis at OPUS Beauty
Location Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel
Art and Design Director Emily Zirimis
Designer Liz Coulbourn
Associate Visuals Editor Bea Oyster
Culture Editor Kaitlyn McNab
Associate Culture Director P. Claire Dodson
Associate Director of Audience Development and Analytics Mandy Velez Tatti
Sr. Social Media Manager Honestine Fraser
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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