I Kissed A Girl: Contestants on a dating show about finding love and friends

Last summer I Kissed A Boy made history as Britain’s first gay dating show. Now it’s the girls’ turn.

I Kissed A Girl features – as you might have guessed – a cast of lesbian and bisexual women.

Ten participants are housed in an Italian villa and, as the title suggests, are introduced with a kiss.

Like its predecessor, it is presented by Dannii Minogue, but this time it is TikTokker Charley Marlowe who enters the voice-over booth.

The show’s contestants come from different backgrounds, and BBC Newsbeat spoke to three – Priya, Amy and Demi – about their journeys leading up to the show.

Priya is a Sikh and says she has been fortunate to feel embraced by her religion, something she talks about on the show.

“Just because you’re queer doesn’t mean you can’t be religious,” she says.

“I just think that your own relationship with God is very personal and you don’t have to share it with anyone else.”

By talking about her own experiences on the programme, Priya hopes to “encourage other South Asian and queer women to feel comfortable with who they are”.

“It might be different for other people, but I’m a Sikh,” she explains.

While some Sikhs face homophobia and there are opposing views on same-sex marriage within the religion, Priya says she follows the interpretation of love as something that exists on a spiritual rather than a physical level.

“Basically the religion is like falling in love with a soul,” she says.

‘It’s not necessarily a gender or a person, but a soul.

“I think that’s really wonderful.

“And that’s why I love the religion so much and talk about it on the show.”

But Demi had a harder time coming out to her family.

She is of Nigerian background and homosexual activities are illegal in the country.

Although she says she was able to casually let go of the fact that she liked girls, Demi says she hasn’t spoken to her father since appearing on the show.

“He suggested I go back to the villages in Nigeria, where they weren’t really accepting of queer people – so that was very hurtful at the time,” she says.

“And because I also told him I was going to the show, we didn’t talk again.

“So yeah, I think it’s hard. But I’m 24. It doesn’t affect me as much as it did when I was younger. It’s fine.”

Demi says she has a strong support network thanks to her mother, sister and new friends from the show.

“Even when all that was happening with my dad, I still felt pretty safe, thanks to my friends,” she says.

Amy has two sisters who are gay, and says she has been with her family for a few years.

But she says it will still be interesting to be on the show because many people at home don’t know about her sexuality.

“Growing up, I found it quite difficult,” she says.

“So they’re going to see my face and hear my voice, which is going to be quite an experience.”

She says her sisters would have loved to see a show like I Kissed A Girl when they were younger.

“If we had had that growing up, that would have been amazing to see,” she says.

Amy says she hopes the show will challenge another prejudice many LGBT women face: how they should look.

“I had different levels of what I would consider masculine and feminine, and when I went in and met all these new people, that completely changed,” she says.

“It’s really just overturning that binary.”

Demi and Priya say one of the biggest challenges they face is people assuming they are heterosexual because they appear more feminine.

“They assume you’re not a lesbian because of your appearance,” says Priya.

“I feel like we’re all femme here,” Demi says. “So I think everyone assumes that we’re not looking for other women or non-binary people.”

Whether they find love or not will be revealed on the show, but all the contestants say the show has helped them make “friends for life.”

“I didn’t have any gay friends because the only people I knew who were gay were the women I dated,” says Priya.

“And getting to be in that environment, meeting all these amazing, colorful, beautiful women and building friendships with each of them is so amazing.

“And I’ll have queer friends for life.”

Amy says meeting the other girls on the show, who come from all over the UK, gave her the chance to meet people she would normally never meet.

“So it just adds layers and layers and layers to my chosen family,” she says.

I Kissed a Girl starts on BBC iPlayer on May 5. The episodes air every Sunday and Monday evening at 9pm on BBC Three.