Love Island’s Iris Explains Those TJ Photos on Gabby Windey’s ‘Long Winded’

When TMZ published photos of Love Island’s Iris Kendall and TJ Palma hanging out together just days after the season finale, the internet had questions. Is she over Pepe? Are Iris and TJ getting back together? Does the villa have another dramatic love triangle unfolding off the island?

On Thursday, Iris cleared the air on Long Winded with Gabby Windey, explaining that the meetup was about closure—nothing more.

“I owed TJ a conversation for closure,” she tells Windey. “I had to do that. It was on my mind 24/7.”

For those who are employed and need a refresher: Iris and TJ had connected in the villa before he was eliminated by the other islanders. She was visibly upset by his departure—”I wanted to leave”—and was “down bad” for days afterward. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, she coupled up with fellow bombshell Pepe Garcia, with whom she finished in fourth place.

But according to Iris on Long Winded, the transition wasn’t as sudden as it appeared on television.

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During her hour-long conversation with Windey, Iris revealed that she’d been attracted to Pepe “the entire time” but felt constrained by villa dynamics. “At first bombshells can’t explore bombshells, like that kind of thing” she explains. “You gotta like focus on the people that are there.”

When TJ was voted out, Iris was genuinely heartbroken. “I was crying because I really built like this great connection with TJ and it was something that like, I was really excited about exploring,” she says, explaining how entering the villa as a bombshell is similar to navigating chilly waters (except for Amaya, who Iris says welcomed her warmly, “very like, come here”).

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But once Iris found a connection with TJ, she says that for the first time she didn’t feel like someone’s “escape route” or “backup plan.” Which made his exit all the more devastating. “I don’t have a phone in there, so the only thing I could do is like, look at pictures of him,” she says.

It was only after processing that loss that she and Pepe began having deeper conversations. “When he kissed me in the challenge, that was when I was like, I felt a spark,” she tells Windey. “You know, like a real spark.”

So what did Iris have to say to TJ?

The link up captured by paparazzi was Iris’s attempt to process and navigate her emotions to TJ himself. “My feelings for you were real,” she said she needed him to understand. “Like this was a genuine feeling I felt, and I had to tell you that because I didn’t want you to think like, oh, I’m moving on like so quickly.”

Where does that leave Pepe? “I think that I really like what Pepe and I have now,” Iris tells Windey, noting that Pepe “loves TJ” and “thinks the world of all the guys and all the girls.”

For way more tea, tune into the full conversation on Long Winded. And let’s hand it to Windey for asking all the questions (“Do you guys all wax and bleach your assholes?”) we were truly wondering.