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It probably won’t come as much of a surprise that a couple of this year’s Big Brother housemates already had links to reality TV before entering the most famous house in Britain.
Not only did Sam Ashby previously appear on MTV’s Love Squad, which was hosted by Charlotte Dawson, but returning housemate Emily Hewertson previously revealed that she’d turned down Love Island in the past.
Now it’s been revealed that another Big Brother 2025 housemate nearly ended up on Love Island too. Well, we say that, they applied and got rejected by show bosses. Brutal.
The Big Brother 2025 cast ©Initial/ITV
The housemate in question is none other than butler in the buff Tate Reynolds, who has let slip that he applied for the ITV2 dating show before ending up on Big Brother.
Sharing a video to Instagram last week, Tate told his followers, ‘I let it slip yesterday that I was actually applying for another show before I got on Big Brother and loads of folk in the questions were asking, “Oh, what show was it?” Instead of telling you, I’m just going to show my audition tape for it and then you can take a guess.’
The video then cut to a series of clips in which Tate showed why he would be ‘such a good Islander’ as he showed off his toned physique, played the guitar naked and jokingly phoned a ‘penis doctor’ about getting a reduction.
Like all good films, Tate’s Love Island audition tape had a sequel which he shared a few days later. The follow-up showed Tate grabbing his suitcase and preparing to jet off to the villa before receiving a phone call telling him, “It’s not good news,” and that he’d been rejected from the show.
‘@loveisland made a big mistake pal,’ Tate captioned the post.
It turns out Tate isn’t the only 2025 housemate that could have been on Love Island as Emily let slip that she’d previously been approached by producers in an interview following her brutal eviction on night one. However, it was actually Emily who turned down the show rather than the other way around as she didn’t want to be seen as the ‘token Tory’.
‘When I first got the call I was excited! I was thinking about the designer handbags I could buy if I made it through the show and become this big reality TV star,’ she told GB News.
‘But as it kind of went on, reality kind of struck and I thought about how I would be characterised on this TV show, and I think I would've been the sore thumb and the token Tory.’
WATCH: Love Island 2023 winner Jess Harding speaks out about those All Stars 2026 rumours 👀
Nathan Katnoria is heat and Closer online’s senior digital writer. He’s been obsessed with Big Brother ever since the days of Chantelle Houghton and Preston and was hooked on the ITV2 reboot. He even attended the final and saw the housemates up close and personal.