As soon as Serena Page and Kordell Beckham locked eyes in the Love Island USA villa while clad (coincidentally?) in matching neon-green ensembles, viewers were locked in. TikTok hailed the couple’s Black love, swooning over clips of Page doing Beckham’s hair and dramatic edits of the couple’s fights. Over the course of the show’s sixth season, its most popular and acclaimed yet, the couple faced a roller coaster of ups and downs: Page thinking the 22-year-old Beckham wasn’t “intellectually stimulating” enough after he expressed an interest in pursuing a Cheez-It sponsorship, their subsequent breakup and make-up, and Beckham’s ill-advised round of “exploring connections” with bombshell Daia during Casa Amor. And yet they persevered, ultimately coming out on top and pulling down a shared $100,000 in prize money (plus a potential Cheez-It payout, if Beckham’s Instagram followers offer an indication).
Pretty good, considering the pair never thought they’d win. “I thought it was either JaNa and Kenny or Kendall and Nicole,” Beckham says. “Even when it got to the final two, I thought it had to be Leah and Miguel. We don’t know what everyone outside watching is thinking of us, though it turned out it was good stuff.”
You’ve just gotten your phones back. What has it felt like to see the reception of your story online?
Serena Page: I’d definitely use the term “overwhelmed” but in a good way.
I know you’re in a bubble on the show, but were you ever able to get a sense of how people felt about you?
S.P.: We started to get an idea when we made it to the final four. Personally, I didn’t know what America was thinking of us because we haven’t had the most typical Love Island journey or the smoothest sailing. I was like, Maybe they’re sick of our asses.
Why did you think another couple was going to win?
Kordell Beckham: With JaNa and Kenny, their progress was crazy, like they had a real little love experience. Kenny really likes that woman and JaNa really likes that man. Kendall and Nicole was a love story too. Even Aaron and Kaylor, since they were boyfriend and girlfriend, I thought they’d be there at the end.
Was it a surprise to you both that they weren’t?
S.P.: Only a little bit. I feel like Aaron wasn’t being the most honest about his Casa experience, and I knew that wouldn’t resonate well. Nobody likes a liar. I love Aaron to death, but that’s probably what steered America away.
It’s like he forgot people at home were watching or that there were cameras around. Is that easy to do, though?
K.B.: Literally day two I forgot there were cameras all around. There are these moments where you see one and you’re like, Oh shit, there’s a camera right there, but most of the time you just forget about them completely.
Kordell, you seemed to forget that there was even a prize for winning Love Island.
K.B.: Yeah, I forgot you had to win. It didn’t hit me until Ariana was like, “Now we’re going to announce the winners of this season of Love Island,” and I was like, “Oh, shit!” I was just so locked in.
S.P.: But that’s how he is.
K.B.: I can be in my own world a lot.
There’s a popular tweet that says, “Kordell really came to Love Island as a boy and will be leaving as a man.” Do you think that’s true?
K.B.: That’s the truth. I’m not even going to sit here and lie. I did come in a boy, even though my mind-set was already mature. Everything I did on the show was something that I would do naturally, but I do feel I left a man, because there’s always room for growth. I have grown in ways that I didn’t know I could grow.
I also saw a lot of discussion about why there’s so much goddamn avocado toast.
K.B.: That was my first question when I got in there! Everybody was talking about avocado toast. I don’t even fuck with avocados. Serena eats avocados, though, so I was like, You know what? Let me make this little avocado toast and I’ll try it myself. And I’ve got to say, it’s pretty good. But I was like, Is this a Love Island thing or is everyone else in the world really just into avocado toast? I honestly don’t know.
S.P.: It’s also one of the easier breakfast items to make, especially because we have to get into our day. We can’t spend all day making a buffet.
K.B.: I will say, I would make Serena real breakfast literally every day. Even on our bad days, I was still making some eggs and bacon, some pancakes or some French toast.
Kordell, you made some jokes about being blind and some people online wondered what was up with your glasses. Did you just not want to wear them?
K.B.: I have glasses, but they’re the wrong prescription. I was trying to get my new prescription before the show, but they were saying it was going to take two months because my eyesight got worse or my lenses were going to be thicker now. I was like, “I don’t have that much time,” so I just went in with the same two pairs of glasses I’d been wearing and managed to break both of them. On one pair, one of the arms is gone and on the other, it broke halfway. I’d wear them sometimes, but I’d try and move my hair down to cover up where the arm stopped so you wouldn’t see it.
How much time do you get to prepare for the show, from getting the call that you’ve officially been cast to getting on a plane?
S.P.: It depends on the person. It can be a few weeks or a few days. The process is long enough, though, that you can start preparing just in case you get on.
K.B.: Yeah, it was always like, “You never know when you’re going to go in. Do whatever you need to now so that you have enough time.”
Have you talked about what’s next for you both? Are you going to do long-distance? Are one of you moving?
S.P.: We definitely talked about it in the villa. We’re both from Texas, but I’ve been in L.A. for a year now and I’ve convinced him to move out there, so y’all are going to see a lot more of us.
K.B.: I’ve been trying to move out of Texas for the longest time, but it was either going to be Arizona, Miami, or Vegas. L.A. wasn’t on my radar, but I met her so now it’s on the radar.
Your love story had its ups and downs, and that’s not even addressing the pressures that come from getting together on a reality-TV show. How do you make sure things like what happened with Kordell in Casa don’t keep popping up to haunt your relationship?
K.B.: Everything that happened just made us stronger. We don’t really think about the past. We actually joke around on it. It’s become something we both can laugh at and enjoy and be like, “Hey, that happened, but look at us now.”
We found out during the finale that there’s a Love Island USA reunion coming up on August 19. Do you have any questions for the others yet?
S.P.: We just got our phones. I haven’t even had time to catch up. Maybe once I do a deep dive into social media, I’ll have questions. But right now, we’re just having a blast.
This story has been updated to remove a question with a factual error.