Love Island’s Amy Hart became emotional as she paid tribute to the late Caroline Flack during a candid interview on Thursday’s episode of Good Morning Britain.
The reality star, 26, opened up about the former Love Island host’s support as she endured a very public heartbreak over Curtis Pritchard on the 2019 series of the ITV2 reality show and when she received online death threats during her time in the villa.
The star said: ‘She was a huge part of the biggest thing that’s happened in my life and she was amazing, from putting us all at ease on the first day, between breaks in filming, asking ‘are you alright girls?’ to squeezing my hand when I came back from Casa Amor.
Moved: Love Island’s Amy Hart became emotional as she paid tribute to the late Caroline Flack during a candid interview on Thursday’s episode of Good Morning Britain
There for you: The reality star, 26, opened up about the former Love Island host’s support as she endured a very public heartbreak over Curtis Pritchard on the 2019 series of the ITV2 reality show and when she received online death threats during her time in the villa
‘Basically telling me to shut up because I was baring my soul when I shouldn’t have been and then at AfterSun, the afterparty she sat me down and talked me through everything, how to move forward and what the industry’s like.
Amy became visibly emotional as she revealed how Caroline had contacted her own best friend when Amy received death threats on social media.
She said: ‘She reached out to my best friend too about how to navigate the dark world of social media.
‘My friend posted a post about the death threats I was receiving and Caroline followed her and messaged her to say, “It’s fine just ignore them and move on”.’
She said: She said: ‘She reached out to my best friend too about how to navigate the dark world of social media’
”I was gutted, I was really gutted. I send my love to her family and friends, I didn’t know her for that long. The change she did for all of us. She went above and beyond her role as a presenter.’
Amy is once again looking for love on reality TV and appears in the new series of Celebs Go Dating on E4.
Talking about her experience, she said: ‘I went in there very superficially thinking, ‘Right, I want to meet someone’. They’re going to find people for me to date, but the actual journey I go on… because Anna [Williamson] and Paul [Carrick Brunson] are both counsellors, so as well as dating, it’s therapy.
‘I thought I was going to get away with just talking about my dates, but they delve into everything – past relationships, your history from when you were a child and how that relates to what you do now.’
Brave: She said: ‘My friend posted a post about the death threats I was receiving and Caroline followed her and messaged her to say, “It’s fine just ignore them and move on”‘
Tragic: The star said: ‘She was a huge part of the biggest thing that’s happened in my life and she was amazing’
Amy added: ‘It’s really helpful. Like I say, I went in there looking for one thing and I came out with this whole different vibe.’
Host Kate Garraway asked Amy if she was heartbroken or overwhelmed when she left Love Island last year after breaking up with dancer Curtis, 24, on the show,
Amy said: ‘Yeah, a bit of everything really. Obviously, it’s a bubble and there’s no getting out of it.
‘I saw the psychologist twice a day at the end and I was chatting to them and she said, ‘When you meet someone new…’ and I said, ‘Well I’m not going to meet anyone new in the next three weeks’ and then I went, ‘Oh, if I’m not going to meet anyone, I might as well go home and see my mum. I’m just miserable here, so I’m going to go.”
‘I still see the psychiatrist now.’
Talking about why she has chosen to put her personal life in the public eye, the star said: ‘With Love Island, it’s that I am a bit quirky, a bit out there. I’m from a very small town and nobody really gets me there, so I thought you have to be a certain type of person to apply for something like Love Island, so I thought I might meet someone a bit like me on there.
Shock death: Caroline took her own life aged 40 on Saturday, after a worried friend who was staying with her went to the shops, leaving the ex-Love Island presenter alone at her London flat
‘And also there’s a lot of couples from Love Island who would never have met elsewhere and then because all the feedback I’ve got from everyone since coming out is ‘I felt that, we’ve all been there’, so everyone related to it, so when I was offered Celebs Go Dating, I thought, ‘Brilliant.
‘They’re going to find me someone, I’m really lazy’ and I had so many girls message me saying, ‘I’m 27 and I’ve never had a proper boyfriend and people think I’m weird but you being on TV and showing that’s really normal is really good.”
She added: ‘I’m an open book and I always have been, even before Love Island, my Instagram Stories was me talking on it. I’ve always been quite an open person and again, I think that’s what people relate to.’
Caroline took her own life aged 40 on Saturday, after a worried friend who was staying with her went to the shops, leaving the ex-Love Island presenter alone at her London flat.
It came just hours after she was told she would face trial for allegedly assaulting her boyfriend Lewis Burton, something she denied.
In a poignant unpublished Instagram post, shared by Caroline’s mother Chris this week. Caroline explained how her ‘whole world and future was swept from under my feet’ in the 24 hours following her arrest.
Caroline revealed she had been having ‘some sort of emotional breakdown for a very long time’ and she and her family ‘could not take it anymore’.
The presenter had planned to post the message on social media and had shown it to her mother at the end of January, but advisers warned her not to share it with her millions of followers.
Caroline said she ‘took responsibility for what happened that night’ but said it had been an accident and she ‘was NOT a domestic abuser’.
She added: ‘We had an argument and an accident happened. An accident. The blood that someone SOLD to a newspaper was MY blood and that was something very sad and very personal.
‘The reason I am talking today is because my family can’t take anymore. I’ve lost my job. My home. My ability to speak. And the truth has been taken out of my hands and used as entertainment.
‘I can’t spend every day hidden away being told not to say or speak to anyone.
‘I’m so sorry to my family for what I have brought upon them and for what my friends have had to go through.
‘I’m not thinking about ‘how I’m going to get my career back’. I’m thinking about how I’m going to get mine and my family’s life back.’
If you have been affected by this story, you can call the Samaritans on 116 123 or visit www.samaritans.org.
Last post: In a poignant unpublished Instagram post, shared by Caroline’s mother Chris this week. Caroline explained how her ‘whole world and future was swept from under my feet’ in the 24 hours following her arrest