Sophie Monk has a confession. She’s been hosting Love Island Australia for eight seasons, which, as it turns out, is longer than most of her romantic relationships. “It’s the longest commitment I’ve ever had,” she laughs. “My husband’s going, ‘We’re coming on eight years,’ but Love Island’s been longer.” So, who wins? Her husband, Joshua Gross, or Love Island? “Actually, sorry, my makeup artist I’ve been with a little bit longer,” she says, laughing again. “It’s a toss-up. I love Love Island.”
It’s exactly what you’d expect from Monk. Funny, unfiltered and completely incapable of taking herself too seriously. But as I discover during our conversation for the marie claire podcast, You’re Gonna Want To Hear This, there’s another side to the woman Australia has loved for more than two decades. She’s sensitive. She worries about what people think. She’s struggled with insecurity, questioned her intelligence and spent years learning how to love herself. And, perhaps most surprisingly, the woman who has made a career out of being the life of the party is actually quite shy. “I’m an introvert,” she tells me. “But my job [is] extrovert. So you can put me in front of camera, I could talk easy, but you put me in a group of people socialising, I think people expect me to be a lot louder.”
But first, there’s the small matter of Love Island. And according to Monk, season eight is going to be a big one. With Love Island Australia returning this week, Monk promises a season so packed with drama that producers have added two extra episodes. “I’ve never heard of this in television ever, especially in this day and age,” she says. “We’re getting two extra episodes, ’cause they literally could not cut it down.” The show has moved into the famous Love Island USA villa in Fiji, and Monk says the energy was immediate. “The contestants just, like, all lit up,” she says. “They must’ve watched the last season and it was just on straight away.”
And the drama? Apparently, there’s plenty. “The content, they were like, ‘We can’t, we can’t cut out this bit.’ So two more episodes is massive. That’s how intense it is.” There’s also a secret she’s desperate to reveal. “Oh my God, I wanna give you a spoiler so bad,” she says. “There is a secret that’s coming. I just wanna tell the fans now, and then it won’t let me, but it’s gonna make them so happy.” Naturally, I push for more. “Fans have been asking, and, like, it’s not today,” she teases. “But it’s coming and it’s really big for us.” Consider us intrigued.
For Monk, the secret to Love Island’s success isn’t actually the beautiful people, bikinis or inevitable romantic disasters. It’s something far more relatable: insecurity. “You become a kid when you date again,” she says. “Your insecurities crawl in and all that. So I think watching it makes you feel human and not as crazy.” And she’s seen plenty of herself in the contestants. “You see some girls act out, and I’m like, ‘I’ve done that.’ And everyone’s like, ‘God, she’s nuts.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, she seems nuts. I’ve done heaps worse.'” It’s why she believes reality television is so addictive. “We just love watching emotions and people act out a bit, ’cause it makes us feel more normal about ourselves.” And then comes perhaps the most Sophie Monk observation of all. “We’re all a little bit crazy, we’re just better at hiding it, some of us.”
Of course, Monk knows a thing or two about finding love herself. In fact, she’s arguably one of Love Island’s greatest success stories. Not because she appeared as a contestant, but because the show indirectly introduced her to her husband. “It was the first season of Love Island, and I was flying back,” she recalls. “He jumped on the plane. And on the plane trip home, we just started talking.” What happened next is quite possibly one of my favourite celebrity love stories. “I was like, ‘So are you single?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah.’ And I went, ‘Can I kiss you?'”
But there was one important detail to attend to first. “We’re in business class, so I said, ‘Can I go brush my teeth?’ ‘Cause it’d been, like, a few hours.” Naturally. She returned from the bathroom and they kissed. “That’s it. We did not go any further,” she laughs, quickly clarifying exactly what happened in those business-class seats. The flight lasted 16 hours. Monk estimates she’d made her move three hours in. “I reckon three hours in I asked that, too, so that was ballsy.” I ask how many champagnes she’d consumed. “Oh, heaps.” At first, she was suspicious. Gross seemed too perfect. “I was like, ‘Oh, he’s a player. He’s too good.’ You know? Like, too cool, too perfect.” But he wasn’t.
And that’s where this story gets interesting. Because when she met Gross, Monk had almost completely given up on relationships. “I thought I had definitely kinda given up,” she admits. “I thought it’s not for me or something’s wrong with me that I’m not into anyone. I’m not feeling that connection ever.” She’d decided to concentrate on work instead. “I was like, ‘That’s it. I’m cool. I’ll just work forever.’ And then that’s when he came. Literally I let go.” Eight years later, she says the relationship still feels new. “It feels like brand new always.”
So what was different about him? “His intellect and emotional intelligence,” she says. “We’ve got the same kind of perspective on people, and we’re really patient, both of us, with people. Morally we’re similar.” But it’s the emotional security that’s made the biggest difference. “I wanna feel safe, secure, not have to worry or have anxiety about, you know, what people are up to or anything.” Monk is refreshingly open about her previous relationships. “I’m anxious too. I’m codependent,” she tells me when we discuss attachment styles. She admits that finding someone emotionally secure initially felt unfamiliar. “You can almost test it,” she says. “And you push it, because you’re like, ‘Hang on, this can’t be right.'”
She even warned Gross about her tendency to sabotage something good. “I was like, ‘Don’t let me… I might, like, you know, get a bit stressed about this.'” His response? “He’s like, ‘Okay, I get it.'” That emotional maturity, she says, has allowed her to be herself without feeling judged. “He’s kind of taught me to love myself in a way.” And she has some strong advice for women who aren’t happy in their relationships. “Don’t settle. I mean, I settled, and I guess it doesn’t matter what age, if you’re not happy, you’re not happy.” She knows how difficult leaving can feel. “I think you can get caught comfortably,” she says. “Also, you get scared, oh, what if I can’t date outside, and all that.” But staying in an unhappy relationship, she warns, can come at a significant emotional cost. “It just takes a big chunk of your life.”
It’s a lesson she wishes she’d understood earlier. And watching hundreds of Islanders navigate relationships has only reinforced another important truth: rejection isn’t always heartbreak. Sometimes, it’s ego. “That’s what I’m learning on the show, too. It’s more rejection, and then it makes it feel like love, but it’s not, it’s ego.” She laughs at the memory of a boy she didn’t particularly like suddenly losing interest in her. “I was like, ‘What? Now I like you.'” For the record, she was in Year Six. Her advice today? “If they don’t want you, you don’t want them.” Simple. Sensible. And considerably easier said than done.
For someone whose career has spanned music, acting, television presenting and reality TV, Monk has spent a surprising amount of time doubting herself. “I think school didn’t teach the way I learn,” she says when we discuss growing up with attention deficit disorder (ADD). “I felt like I was dumb my whole life, which isn’t good for your self-esteem either.” She believes the education system doesn’t always recognise different ways of learning. “I wish they had schools where they could teach it differently, because I don’t think we’re less intelligent so much, it’s just that we don’t retain the same way.”
And those early experiences followed her into adulthood. “I don’t miss being in my 20s because people treated me like I was dumb, and almost like talk about me in the room like I wasn’t there.” Humour became her defence mechanism. “Because of my ADD I got picked on, so I joined in.” If she made the joke first, nobody else could use it against her. “And then they couldn’t do it to me because I’d already done it. So it couldn’t even hurt me.” But what begins as self-protection can become a habit. Monk admits she’s spent years being unnecessarily hard on herself, often disguising it as comedy. “I’m just resetting all of that kind of self-deprecation. I probably do it too far sometimes, you know, on myself.”
These days, she’s consciously trying to change that inner dialogue. “I try and not ever be mean to myself anymore. I have to catch it and go, ‘Don’t be mean to yourself. Say something nice.'” It’s a surprisingly moving admission from someone who’s spent much of her career making the rest of us laugh. Despite 26 years in the public eye, Monk insists she hasn’t developed particularly thick skin. “I care so much,” she admits when I ask whether getting older has made her less concerned about other people’s opinions. “I hate it. That’s why I just don’t read anything bad. I get people to pre-read.”
Some criticism still hurts. “If it hits a nerve and it’s something that’s actually real, often it’ll hurt me,” she says. And while she might appear effortlessly confident on television, social situations can be intimidating. “I think people expect me to be a lot louder and a bit, ‘Hey, party.’ And I’m not that. I’m a bit, like, shy.”
At home, life couldn’t be further removed from red carpets and television studios. “Just gumboots, UGG boots. I don’t garden, he gardens,” she says, describing life with Gross. She spends her downtime gaming, playing PlayStation VR and looking after their two golden retrievers, Billy and Bluey. “They’re like our kids.” Although she admits the dog hair is relentless. “Your life is hair. You’re eating hair. I don’t care anymore. I just swallow it.” Visitors who turn up wearing black have been warned. “They walk out and it’s not, it’s like cashmere.” And yes, she’s completely obsessed with her dogs. “I wanna race home now to see my dog,” she says.
It’s these simple pleasures, rather than expensive possessions, that now make Monk happiest. Having experienced both wealth and financial uncertainty, she has little interest in projecting a perfect lifestyle. “I’ve seen so much money, and I’ve seen so much not money, and it doesn’t mean shit,” she says. “I don’t wanna make people feel envious of me. Because you shouldn’t. And I think that if you want people to feel envious of you, that’s weird.” She’d even like to write a book about what she’s observed. “I’ve been around so, so much money, and it’s not what you think it is.”
When I ask Monk to describe this period of her life, her answer catches me off guard. “I had some very, very tough years,” she says, referring to the challenges of pursuing a career overseas. “I was always determined to find happiness over everything.” And now, finally, she feels she’s found it. “I just wanna freeze it for one second ’cause I’m scared something’s gonna happen.” It’s an unexpectedly vulnerable admission. “It feels nice,” she continues. “I’ve got the beautiful show, and it’s such in a good place. And then I’ve got a beautiful husband. I just wanna stay like this for at least a little bit.”
Gross remains central to that happiness. “He’s just like beyond a best friend. Like, he really cares about me. There’s zero ego about him. It’s no competition.” He’s also refreshingly honest. “He’ll be honest. He’s like, ‘God, you were cringe on that show last night.'” She laughs. After everything she’s experienced, she’s discovered that love doesn’t have to be complicated.
And perhaps that’s why she’s still so passionate about Love Island. Because underneath the bikinis, bronzed bodies and spectacular relationship disasters, Monk sees something genuinely human. “These are real people with real hearts in real scenarios,” she says. “We all can laugh at the fact they’re in bathers.” But she wants viewers to remember that the feelings are real, too. “It’s fiery,” she says of the new season.
And after eight years of watching other people fall in and out of love, what’s the biggest lesson she’s learnt? “Every pot has a lid. There’s someone for everyone. You can’t predict it.”
Coming from a woman who met her husband on a plane, asked to kiss him after three hours and then promptly went to brush her teeth, I think she might be onto something.
Love Island Australia season eight is now airing on Channel 9 and streaming on 9Now. Listen to Sophie Monk’s full conversation with Georgie McCourt on marie claire’s podcast, You’re Gonna Want To Hear This, available on your favourite podcast platform.
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