I Kissed A Girl: Gay dating show cast on love and friendship

Last summer, I Kissed A Boy made history as the UK's first gay dating show. Now it's the girls' turn.

I Kissed A Girl - as you might have guessed - puts a cast of lesbian and bisexual women at the centre.

Ten contestants are shacked up in an Italian villa and, as the title suggests, they're introduced with a kiss.

Like its predecessor it will be hosted by Dannii Minogue, but this time it's TikTokker Charley Marlowe stepping in to the voiceover booth.

The contestants on the show come from a range of backgrounds, and BBC Newsbeat spoke to three - Priya, Amy and Demi - about their journeys before the show.

Priya is a Sikh, and says she's been fortunate to feel embraced by her religion, something she speaks about on the show.

"Just because you're queer doesn't mean you can't be religious," she says.

"I just think your own relationship with God is very personal and you don't have to share that with anyone else."

By speaking about her own experiences it on the programme, Priya hopes to encourage "other South Asian and queer women to feel comfortable with who they are".

"It might be different for other people, but I'm a Sikh," she explains.

While some Sikhs face homophobia and there are opposing views on same-sex marriage within the religion, Priya says she follows the interpretation of love as something that exists on a spiritual rather than physical level.

"Basically, the religion is just like falling in love with a soul," she says.

"It's not necessarily a gender, or a person, but a soul.

"I think that's really beautiful.

"And that's why I love the religion so much and I do speak about it on the show."

But Demi had a more difficult time coming out to her family.

She has a Nigerian background, and same-sex activity is illegal in the country.

While she says she was able to casually drop the fact she liked girls in to conversation, Demi says she hasn't spoken to her dad since appearing on the show.

"He made suggestions that I'd go back to the villages in Nigeria where they didn't really accept queer people - so that was very hurtful at the time," she says.

"And then, since I also told him that I was going on the show, we haven't spoken.

"So yeah, I think it's difficult. But I'm 24 - it doesn't affect me as much as it would have, like, in my youth. It's fine."

Demi says she has a strong support network thanks to her mum and sister and new friends from the show.

"Even when all that happened with my dad, I felt still quite safe, because of my friends," she says.

Amy has two sisters who are gay, and says she's been out to her family for a few years now.

But she says being on the show will still be interesting because a lot of people at home don't know about her sexuality.

"Growing up, I found it quite difficult," she says.

"So they're going to see my face and hear my voice, which is going to be quite an experience."

She says her sisters would have loved to see a show like I Kissed A Girl when they were younger.

"If we had that growing up, that would have been such an amazing thing to see," she says.

Amy says she hopes the show will challenge another preconception lots of LGBT females face - how they're expected to look.

"I had different kind of levels of what I would consider masculine, feminine, and then going in and meeting all these new people completely changed that," she says.

"It's really just knocking down that binary."

Demi and Priya say that one of the biggest challenges they face is people assuming they're heterosexual because they present as more feminine.

"They assume you're not a lesbian, because of the way you look," Priya says.

"I feel like we're all femme here," Demi says. "So I think everyone comes to the assumption that we're not looking for other women or non-binary people."

Whether they find love or not will be revealed on the show, but all the contestants say the show has helped them make "friends for life".

"I had no gay friends, like the only people I knew who were gay were the women I dated," Priya says.

"And coming into that environment, meeting all these amazing, colourful, beautiful women and building friendships with each and every one of them is so amazing.

"And I'm gonna have queer friends for life."

Amy says meeting the other girls on the show, who come from all over the UK, gave her the chance to meet people she never normally would.

"So it's just adding just layers and layers and layers to my chosen family," she says.

I Kissed a Girl will begin on BBC iPlayer on 5 May. Episodes will air on BBC Three every Sunday and Monday night at 9pm.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.