HOLLYWOOD—The popular CBS-TV reality show Love Island was mysteriously missing a cast member in the episode that aired Sunday, September 20. Noah Purvis, a 24-year-old Missouri resident, was apparently removed from the show with no explanation given. But according to a report by Pink News, Purvis was allegedly kicked off the show when producers discovered that he had previously appeared in several gay porn videos.
Pink News reported that sharp-eyed Twitter users alleged that they had identified Purvis as a gay porn performer who worked in several videos for the site CorbinFisher.com.
The pop culture news site Decider reported that it had contacted CBS for comment on the allegations that Purvis’s sudden departure was linked to his gay porn career, but the network offered no further information beyond a vague statement it issued on Tuesday.
“It has been brought to our attention that cast member Noah Purvis provided false information on his application to Love Island, which violates his contestant agreement," CBS said in the statement issued jointly with ITV America. "He has been removed from the show.”
ITV is the British television network that airs the original version of Love Island. The CBS series, titled Love Island USA outside of the U.S., is an American version of the show with the same format.
The premise of Love Island is that a group of cast members must live together in an island villa. The U.S. version is set in Fiji, while the U.K. original is filmed on the Spanish island of Mallorca. As they are filmed constantly—as in similar reality shows such as Big Brother and Survivor—they must form “couples” with other cast members, or be ejected from the competition.
But Purvis was not ejected for failing to couple up. He simply vanished, and all mention of him was subsequently scrubbed from the CBS website and other promotional material. In Sunday’s episode, no cast member so much as mentioned Purvis, as if he had never appeared on the show in the first place.
According to the entertainment site ScreenRant, however, “Noah was suddenly and inexplicably cut from the show after everyone caught wind that he had been a male performer in a few gay adult films.”
Purvis has not commented publicly on his departure from the show, but on Wednesday he posted a statement to his Instagram account saying, “OHANA means family... FAMILY means no one gets left behind or forgotten. All of you out here have made me feel this and I can't express how loved I feel for the first time in my life.”
Photo By Noah Purvis Instagram
