“We felt that massively in the changing room"
The 12th season of Love Island had some standout moments but one of the highlights was the strong friendship between Shakira Khan, Toni Laites and Yasmin Pettet.
Dubbed “the people’s princesses”, the trio captured viewers’ hearts with their support for one another.
They ended up in the top three, with Toni winning the series with partner Cach.
For Shakira, she was aware of how women of colour fared on the show:
“I went to a predominantly white high school, I was not the beauty standard, so I was thinking, ‘What have I signed up for?’
“Everyone’s gonna love the blonde hair, blue-eyed girls, we see year in year out on Love Island. I thought, based on initial attraction, it wasn’t going to go well for me, but I was pleasantly surprised.”
She formed a strong bond with Toni and Yasmin, earning praise for their no-nonsense, assertive personalities.
Shakira told i-D: “If you say it how it is, and you’re honest, you’re called ‘a b***h’, you’re ‘nasty’.
“No, I think it’s nasty to speak about someone behind their back, then rally together in groups and target them.”
This put the trio at odds with some of the other Islanders, especially Meg Moore and Helena Ford, whose thinly-veiled jibes continued throughout the season.
Shakira explained: “We felt that massively in the changing room, the sniggers, the whispers, the dirty looks.
“When you come around the corner and they stop talking, you feel isolated, it feels frosty, really tense, and it’s not nice. It wasn’t a bad edit; we tried to fix it, but that was our experience, we lived it.”
Shakira, Toni and Yasmin embraced conflict openly and with empathy, while making room for new Bombshells who were ostracised.
For Shakira, she was a bubbly personality. But she endured some difficult moments due to heartbreak and an ill-judged romance with Connor Phillips.
She confessed: “In the outside world, I wouldn’t be sleeping in a bed with someone else when I wasn’t over something.
“I just didn’t get time to heal, and that was a low point for me.”
In those moments, Toni and Yasmin were there for her.
And by the last week, she and Harry Cooksley rekindled their romance.
Shakira admitted: “We hurt people in the process of that, Connor and Helena, because we didn’t deal with our emotions properly.
“But in the last week, it had not sunk in for me that I was liked. I really thought it was going to be me and Harry against the world.”
The three friends were hugely popular, and that has carried over to the outside, from social media messages to people cheering them on the streets.
Putting it down to acting genuine, Shakira said:
“People might find you too much, too loud, too obnoxious, too confrontational.
“But be true to yourself, be genuine, and when you surround yourself with the right people, you’ll do better.”
On what’s next, Shakira Khan has acting aspirations and wants to become a “role model for younger girls in the huge community of South Asian people in the UK”.
Toni and Yasmin are not rushing into any deals but they are looking to use their growing platforms to raise awareness for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation.
Although Love Island saw plenty of drama, it was Shakira, Toni and Yasmin’s strong friendship that was the main highlight, as Yasmin added:
“The Outcasts is what we use. We were the outcasts, and we just want to own it.”
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