We’ll let you into a little secret - just as teachers have their favourite students, journalists have their favourite interviewees. There are many reasons why Olivia Attwood is up there. Refreshingly honest, hilarious and unapologetically herself, the former Love Island contestant has yielded a loyal cult following since stepping into the villa back in 2017.
What you get is what you get with Olivia. We speak during her lunch break on the set of the H! Fashion Digital Cover shoot - she’s sheathed in a white dressing robe with her platinum blonde hair bundled up in old-school curlers. The 34-year-old carries the polish of a stereotypical influencer, but her sharp tongue and penchant for expletives (a woman of our own heart) nod to a grounded relatability.
"Everything that comes out of their mouth is a PR nightmare”
“I get messages from my mum saying ‘oh, the amount of times you swore on that programme was disgusting! But we're still proud of you, bye’,” she laughs. “My family is batsh*t crazy. If I put my whole family on TV now with the camera crew and no edit control, I would never work again. They're so unfiltered - everything that comes out of their mouth is a PR nightmare.”
Born and raised in Chiswick, Olivia had something of a nomadic childhood. When she was five, her family upped sticks and moved to Canada - her father’s native country. After a few years they moved back to the UK, leaving family scattered across the US and North East. The eldest of three, Olivia forged a totally different path to her siblings, who work across biotech and finance.
© David Reiss“We’re all big personalities. I always remember when school friends used to come round to my house from school and be shocked about the things we’d talk about. Nothing's off the table. It’s all fun until someone falls out with someone and then it's like, “OK, I'm done, see you in 6 months!”
With drama written into her DNA, it’s no surprise that reality TV came calling. Olivia made her all-famous entrance into the Love Island villa for Series 3, coupling up with Gloucester-born Chris Hughes in what became a fiery on-again-off-again relationship peppered with viral moments. While the relationship didn’t last, it did provide viewers with some wildly quotable quips and stellar facial expressions.
What the audience didn’t know was that Olivia went into the villa with an agenda - sweet, sweet revenge on her ex and husband-to-be Bradley Dack. It worked a charm.
© Davd Reiss"When we got back together, I told him he had a year to put a ring on it, which is psycho, but that's what I said and he did it."
“I was vexed over some of the stuff he'd done,” she admits candidly. “When I first came off the show he contacted me quite quickly. It was really awkward because we had overlapping friendship groups and used to go to the same places all the time. I didn't want to believe that there was anything still there because I've never gone back to an ex - I was refusing to believe there was something still there, but there was. I couldn't kind of get him out of my head. When we got back together, I told him he had a year to put a ring on it, which is psycho, but that's what I said and he did it.”
The couple wed in a picture-perfect London ceremony in June 2023 at the Bulgari Hotel. Not one to shy away from the hard-hitting questions about her personal life, Olivia is happy to chat about her marriage - the journalism jackpot: “Sometimes the people that have the shiniest exterior have the most f*cked up stuff going on. Everyone has stuff going on behind-the-scenes and they don’t talk about it, so when it comes to your own relationship, you have to give yourself a break. Also, weirder things happen in this industry than any other industry. I don't condemn people for gossiping about my relationship because I love gossiping about other people.”
© David ReissThe theme of relationships is at the core of Olivia’s last onscreen endeavour Olivia Attwood's Bad Boyfriends, an ITV series that aims to correct the sub-par behaviour of promiscuous partners. As the show’s presenter, the star must remain impartial, a taxing task considering the sheer audacity of the male participants.
“I feel quite protective of both of them and the show,” she says. “They've electively come on and been part of this experience and I don't want to berate them straight out the gate. We also have to reconsent the boys after the fake shows are revealed. They have to decide if they want to stay or not and we really do put them through it. I don't want them to feel like they've made the biggest mistake ever. I want them to learn. I want them to grow. I think by scaring people or telling them what they've done wrong, I'd probably lose my whole cast.”
© David Reiss
© David ReissShe adds: “I really do believe that people can reflect on their actions and they can learn and they can grow. I'm a big believer in second chances, but also it's OK to walk away.”
The ITV muse hasn't limited herself to reality television. She’s also ventured into documentary-making, producing hit franchises covering ‘tabboo’ subjects such as plastic surgery, online trolling and sex work.
“My Instagram followers are like my own unpaid research team because they all send me things saying ‘look at this girl, she had this injected into her in Thailand.’ I would love to put myself in a situation that no one would ever expect to see me. I want to be like on a navy ship. I want to be in prison. I want to do something completely out of my comfort zone. If Louis Theroux wants to go for a walk in the park or get a coffee, I am available.”
© David ReissBy this point in our conversation, the comfort zone is a mere dot in the distance - and the topic of sex is up next. Giving her publicist a quick glance of reassurance (“Beth, don’t have a heart attack”) the television veteran plays ball without hesitation: “I said in my podcast that I don't know when I had my first orgasm, but it was definitely years after I started having sex. I felt like sex was for men and that everything about it was for the male - including the way I looked. For that reason, as I've grown older, I want to talk about it. It's not shameful. Also by empowering women and talking about sex, it means that women are going to feel more inclined to say no and to advocate for themselves by not doing things they don't want to. I want young women to know that, you know, it's OK to talk about it.”
She continues: “When I was younger, I thought if you owned a vibrator you were basically a nympho! It was so messed up. I remember buying my first vibrator from Ann Summers in Guildford with a friend - it’s such a core memory - and it felt like I was smuggling drugs across the border. I was sweating buckets. We actually felt like we were committing a crime.”
"...By empowering women and talking about sex, it means that women are going to feel more inclined to say no and to advocate for themselves by not doing things they don't want to."
© David ReissSelf-pleasure aside (Beth, you can breathe a sigh of relief), it’s clear that Olivia is a fierce advocate for women in every sphere - but does her role as a social media personality, a platform often criticised for fueling insecurity among younger audiences, undermine her philosophy?
“I think about this all of the time,” she exhales with a tinge of that iconic Liv Attwood theatricality. “It’s hard because, now I sound like my mum, but do as I say, not as I do, right? You know, if I had an 18-year-old sister, I wouldn't want her to run off and get her boobs done, but I did. I wouldn't want her to party too much, but I did and sometimes still do.”
“I do think there's so much contrived perfection on Instagram - so I think OK, maybe I'm not 100 per cent real to look at, but what I'm going to tell you is real. I'll tell you that my relationship is not perfect and I do get anxious and I do have intrusive thoughts and all the rest of it - and I get a lot of messages from people saying that helps and they can relate. I can't be perfect in everything. I’m not Kate Middleton.”
Does the pressure of being a public-facing figure affect her negatively at all? “People love to hate. They write comments under my posts saying things like ‘she needs to grow up’ and ‘tone down the partying’ and my mum will like them. I’m always asked how it doesn’t affect me, but I basically grew up with my troll. My skin is thick - I'm like an elephant.” A bit of a stretch - considering her 5’10 willowy frame which is often adorned in labels from Chanel to Alaïa and Versace.
© David ReissWith brand collaborations pouring out of her ears, television appearances left, right and centre, and a schedule carved out for at-home biohacking research (her Roman Empire) and afternoons in the oxygen chamber to reverse some Ibiza-induced damage, Olivia shows no signs of slowing down. Yet being kind to herself mentally remains a work in progress for the presenter, a self-professed ‘sweeper’ when it comes to brushing emotions under the rug.
"OK, maybe I'm not 100 per cent real to look at, but what I'm going to tell you is real."
“Because I was a shy child, I put so much pressure on myself. So when I was older, I always had to be the one to have the last word. I have to remind myself that it’s OK to actually just shut up. I don't like dealing with things. I prefer to make a joke out of everything.”
© David ReissVigorously self-aware and brazen, with a hearty dash of British self-deprecation, Olivia not only thrives amidst the noise but gleefully adds to it. Before she heads back to set, I tease, “When do you sleep?” She flashes a grin as wide as you like and, in true Olivia fashion, delivers the perfect sign-off: “Upside down - like a bat.”
The entire series of Olivia Attwood's Bad Boyfriends is available on ITVX
