Laura Whitmore's harrowing new TV role as she takes on toxic men

27 July 2023 , 20:21

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Laura Whitmore has new TV role

Former Love Island host Laura Whitmore will tackle the dark subjects of rough sex, cyber-stalkers and incels as she embarks on a new career as a TV journalist. Having previously overseen buff blokes in trunks chatting up bikini-clad women in the Majorcan villa, Laura will address issues of toxic masculinity.

And she hopes her Love Island audience will tune into Laura Whitmore Investigates. She said: “I might seem like an unusual person to be hosting these shows. I’m probably the best person to do it because of who my audience are. I’d like this to be watched by a range of people, particularly females of my age or maybe the following I have from the shows I’ve worked on. I think it’s important to constantly challenge yourself.”

The 38-year-old – married to the voice of Love Island, Iain Stirling, with whom she has a young daughter – studied journalism in her home city of Dublin and she was inspired to make the programmes by some of her own worrying encounters with men. She said: “When it comes to toxic masculinity, it’s something that infiltrates all our lives, I know it has for me,t’s something that infiltrates all our lives, I know it has for me.

Laura will be looking at the dark side of toxic masculinity (ITV)

"Not to the extremes of this documentary but it’s definitely in our world and how we talk about people, and how men talk about women online, and also women talk about each other. It’s a very real threat and it’s something we need to not just bury our heads in the sand about.”

The three-part series, which launches today on ITVX, sees the presenter travelling within the UK, Europe and the US. She looks into the rise of men using “rough sex” as an excuse to get away with murder. And an episode on incels, or involuntary celibates, uncovers a misogynistic online world where alienated males share their anti-female mindsets.

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In the third instalment, Whitmore looks at how cyber-stalkers operate and what help is available. She described making the series as “intense, eye-opening and emotional”.

She added: “You hope that the series will open up something people didn’t know existed – without scaring people, it’s just about being realistic.”

Nicola Methven