Daily Mail Australia can exclusively reveal Love Island Australia winners Em and Mercedes —who were crowned the season victors and took home $50,000 in Monday night’s finale— are no longer together.
Unlike previous seasons of the reality dating show, the sixth season of the Aussie spin-off was not filmed live, but back in July.
Sydney model and content creator Em, 26, entered the villa on day one and emerged as an early fan favourite for her authentic, straight-talking attitude.
The brunette beauty, who was initially matched with controversial contestant Taylor Reid, later found love with U.S model and bombshell late entrant, Mercedes Knox.
The pair bonded over their love of travel and adventure, and mutual desire not to rush settling down to have kids.
On Monday, the now-exes revealed everything that’s gone down since they walked merrily out of the villa with the finale prize money, as boyfriend and girlfriend.
Love Island Australia 2024 winners Em and Mercedes pose with host Sophie Monk
Love island Australia 2024 finalists (L-R): Kaylah and Erich; Mercedes and Em; Nico and Mia
Em returned to Sydney for one week after filming wrapped, before travelling to the U.S to spend a month travelling the States, and having some quality time with her new long-distance beau.
‘After the show, I was literally in my home in Sydney for six days, before I went overseas for a month,’ Em said.
‘Which was quite nice, because I didn’t really have to assimilate straight back into quote-unquote real life.’
Love Island alum Mercedes, 28, lives in Dallas, Texas.
His Love Island win with Em is actually the male model’s third reality TV crown, with Mercedes having already won two different seasons of FBoy Island, USA.
‘There’s lots of comments saying that the rest of the cast didn’t know I’d been on reality TV before, and that’s absolutely not true,’ he said.
Em told how she’d spent most of her American trip in Los Angeles, California, and New York, ‘which was amazing.’
It’s unclear exactly how long the pair remained a couple after cameras stopped rolling.
‘The month after coming out of the villa, Em and I kind of parted ways,’ Mercedes revealed on the three-way call.
‘And I kind of feel like it wouldn’t have worked because of our communication style differences. But I think we’re better off as friends. Since being home, I’ve been focusing on myself. I opened a bar.’
Asked what their personal highlights of season were, Mercedes said it was undoubtedly the moment when he asked Em to be his girlfriend
He added that the public vote to crown them winners was ‘definitely the right decision.’
Asked what their personal highlights of season were, Mercedes said it was undoubtedly the moment when he asked Em to be his girlfriend.
‘The height of it was asking her to be my girlfriend,’ he said without hesitation. ‘I have no regrets.’
‘I was gonna say when we did synchronised swimming routine in the pool one day to Barbie Girl, Aqua. It was a really fun day,’ Em said.
Season six of Love Island Australia promised the bring the drama. And that it did.
Fans of the global franchise say they’ve never seen a divide between the female contestants quite like the one that emerged after Em’s partner Taylor recoupled with nurse Hannah – who described his choice as being between ‘a Barbie or a Wicked Witch.’
Taking to TikTok, one fan remarked: ‘I feel like being a Hannah and Kaylah stan versus an Em and Mimi stan tells me EVERYTHING I need to know about you,’ in a post which racked up 23,000 likes.
‘There was definitely a lot of either misogyny or internalised misogyny on the show, I think,’ Em told Daily Mail.
‘I feel super strongly about not wanting to settle down and live this cookie-cutter life and get married and all these stereotypical things that you’re expected to want as a young woman.
‘I’m proud I was able to give a platform to girls who resonate with those parts of myself.’
The drama kicked off during movie night when a film titled ‘Mean Girls’ played on screen, which showed Hannah (right) calling Em a ‘witch’ behind her back
Em, pictured during the Truth Bike game, copped a lot of heat for saying that she wouldn’t likely be friends with either Hannah or Kaylah in real life
Mimi, Sophie, and Em remain as close as ever, Em told Daily Mail, with Sophie currently visiting the two Sydneysiders in Bondi
‘Obviously watching the show back has been quite fun, for the most part. I feel like in the last couple of weeks I’ve just been really ready for it to be finished,’ she continued.
The content creator said she feels her lived experience of being inside the villa was reflected fairly on TV.
‘There were definitely a couple of things that were really hard to watch. But oddly enough, it was also quite validating.
‘Seeing how I was feeling in there reflected back to me, in the way that I lived it, was almost healing.’
Em also confirmed her on-screen friendship with Mimi and Sophie is as strong as ever in the real world, while Mercedes said he’s already spoken to Mimi’s ex partner Steph ‘at least four times today.’
‘Mimi and I both live in Bondi, so I speak to Mims every other day. We’re super close, and I’m super close to Sophie as well,’ Em said.
‘She’s in Sydney right now, and we just spent the week in the Gold Coast together.’
“Kiwi Mimi” has confirmed she’s rekindling a romance with Irishman Dylan, after the pair were matched up early in the series and then parted ways.
‘All of us who were on the show, we’re all cool with each other,’ Em added. ‘There’s no bad blood there for the most part, and it’s just not that deep.
‘We’re all kind of laughing because we feel so differently about certain situations now that we’re not living in it.’
Dylan and Mimi, pictured as a couple, have reportedly rekindled their romance after the series
Both Mercedes and Em and very much single, and confirmed that they have no plans to date in the immediate future.
‘I’m super single. I’m not talking to anyone, I’m not texting anyone. I’m as single as you can be,’ he said.
Em, meanwhile, has been ‘hustling’ in her modelling and content creation work since the show, also picking up work at a vintage store in Newtown.
‘It was against our contract to actively date,’ she joked.
‘But even now, I need a mini-mo[ment] to get back into my own life. It’s been very crazy for me over here. So I’m not looking to date anytime soon.’
‘I hate when people say they’re “working on themselves”,’ she mimicked. ‘But honestly? My favourite times in my life have been when I’m single, I feel like that’s when I’ve developed so much as a person.
‘Yeah, my happiest times have been alone.’
Kaylah and Erich appear to be the only couple from the series who are still together.
In a more surprising move, Taylor has been pictured packing on the PDA with Sydneysider Xanthe, 21, who was dumped from Love Island by Zane early on.
