Love Island USA‘s Yulissa Escobar finally revealed how exactly she was told by producers that her time in the villa was over amid her racism scandal.
“Plot twist: I wasn’t dragged out in the dark. I walked out in broad daylight head high, lashes on,” Yulissa, 27, wrote via TikTok on Thursday, July 3. “Here’s the real story.”
Yulissa noted in the video that she couldn’t reveal every detail from her dismissal, adding, “I’m here to address exactly how it happened. Well — not exactly — because I can’t share certain things. But I will share the majority of what happened.”
According to the reality star, the day started out just like any other.
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“I did not wake up in the middle of the night. They didn’t drag my ass out of bed. I was actually just getting comfortable and just coming out of my shell because initially I was kind of timid and shy. I was upset that I got pulled out on that day because I was like, ‘Damn, I was just starting to have fun,’” she admitted. “But it is what it is. I woke up and Ace [Greene] made me breakfast every day. Then I had a conversation with the guys because me and Ace were actually plotting since the night before to kind of spice things up in the villa. We were planning to play spin the bottle to get to know everyone.”
Yulissa recalled production stepping in at some point that day.
“I can’t tell you the time because we don’t have access to the real world. We don’t have access to our phones. We don’t have access to an actual watch or clock. And the producers don’t tell us the time. I had gotten called to the front and then I met one of the producers and they asked me to take my mic off,” she explained. “I figured something serious was kind of happening. I honestly got scared. I thought something happened with a family member or something. They didn’t really tell me anything. They just said that a video resurfaced on the internet and it’s not looking too good. I didn’t really know what video or what I was saying or what I did.”
As Love Island USA viewers might remember, Yulissa was introduced as an OG Islander in season 7, but by the second episode, she was gone. Narrator Iain Stirling later acknowledged the shakeup when he noted that Ace was single because Yulissa “has left the villa.”
Yulissa’s departure came after clips of her using racial slurs on a podcast circulated online. On Thursday, however, she explained that she didn’t realize exactly what was going on until she left Fiji.
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“I didn’t get my phone back for another two days. They were waiting for the two episodes that I was in to air. I was literally in my hotel room losing my mind because I didn’t know what was going on. I just knew that there was a video out there,” she continued on Thursday. “I get it. I said a word that I should have not said. But I wish I would have never said that. It is what it is. I can’t go back in time. I am sorry that I said that word.”
Yulissa’s insight into her exit comes after fans shared a multitude of memes about the different ways they thought she was asked to leave while everyone in the villa was still sleeping. Her fellow season 7 contestant Jeremiah Brown also recently weighed in with his perspective after being dumped from the season.
“They personally never told me anything. They never told us in the villa,” he said during the “Speedy Morman” show on Monday, June 30. “They said she left for personal reasons — I can say that. I found out later after getting my phone back that it was because of whatever happened.”
New episodes of Love Island USA are released six days a week — except for Wednesdays — on Peacock.
