Love Island USA contestant Vasana Montgomery, a 25-year-old business executive from Oregon, will not be among the 12 contestants announced for Season 8.
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“Love Island USA” star Hollandria Carsen played a fun game of yes or no on USA TODAY.
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It’s been a year since Love Island USA suffered the departure of two cast members over past racial slurs, and the show’s Season 8 contestants have already experienced similar turmoil even before it aired.
A source with knowledge of the situation confirmed on Sunday, May 31st, that 25-year-old Vasana Montgomery has been dropped from Love Island USA ahead of its Tuesday, June 2nd premiere. The development comes after a video surfaced over the weekend, days after the casting announcement on Thursday, May 28, that appeared to show Montgomery using a racial slur while singing the song.
TMZ was first to report the news. USA TODAY has reached out to a representative for Peacock Show for comment.
Who is Vasana Montgomery?
Montgomery, who is from Beaverton, Oregon, is a “Thai/Lao girl,” according to her TikTok profile.
She was one of the 12 starting cast members announced by Peacock on May 28th. In the intro to “Love Island,” she referred to herself as “the whole package” because she owns a business and lives alone.
The esthetician school graduate owns a studio in Sale and runs a residential business specializing in beauty treatments, including tattoo artists, eyelash technicians and make-up artists.
“If you ask any of my friends what type of person I am, they’ll show me a map of the world,” Montgomery said in an introductory video.
‘Love Island USA’ cast member’s past racist slurs spark controversy
In Season 7 of Love Island, which aired from June 2025 to July 2025, two cast members left the show during filming, but their departures were rarely acknowledged in the episode.
Every season, some of the cast members leave the show for various reasons, but Season 7’s unexplained exit was related to past online activities of both contestants, including racial slurs. Starting cast member Yulissa Escobar left the scene unceremoniously with limited acknowledgment. Narrator Ian Stirling simply tells viewers: “Yulissa has left the villa.”
Before the show’s premiere, Escobar faced backlash after several leaked videos of him using racial slurs on his podcast. She later posted a written apology “for using language that I had no right to use.”
A few weeks later, Nick Vansteenberg and top contender Sierra Ortega were removed from the show, with Sterling explaining that they had “left the villa for personal reasons.” In the week leading up to Ortega’s exit, screenshots purportedly of recent Instagram posts showed the then-25-year-old contestant using a racial slur toward people of Asian descent and referring to her eyes negatively.
Within days of leaving the villa, Ortega posted a nearly five-minute “accountability video” apologizing to “the entire Asian community” and saying, “I had no idea this word was so painful and harmful and had such a history. I would never have used it otherwise.”
