by Thinus Ferreira
M-Net (DStv 101) has announced actress and presenter Leandie du Randt as the presenter of Love Island South Africa with the pay-TV channel that is sexy-ing up its late-night schedule from 28 February with the first localised version of the reality show.
Love Island SA that will also have an announcer who hasn't been announced yet, will have a single presenter in the form of Leandie du Randt who will dole out the tasks to the sexy, single men and women who will compete to hook up and stay that way - or otherwise get ousted from a luxury Cape Town villa.
Love Island SA will start with a special 90-minute premiere episode on Sunday 28 February at 20:00 in the place of the usual Sunday night movie premiere (the premiere will return to its usual timeslot the week afterwards).
The show will kick-off to introduce the sexy singles who will live in the mansion, with new men and women who will be introduced as contestants in the days and weeks afterwards. Love Island SA will wrap sometime in April.
After the Sunday premiere episode, new hourlong episodes of Love Island SA will be broadcast on M-Net on weeknights at 21:30, with a roundup of Love Island SA "Unseen Bits" broadcast on Sunday nights after the 20:00 movie.
"Hosting Love Island SA is one of my biggest privileges in my life and career so far. It has always been on my vision board to host a big show in South Africa and this is the perfect opportunity to see this come to fruition," says Leandie.
"I'm also very excited to meet the beautiful contestants in the villa."
Leandie du Randt was runner-up in the 7th season of Strictly Come Dancing SA with partner Brandon Eilers le Riche in 2014 and she has been the reality weight-loss programme Slank on kykNET, and the co-host of the weekend music request show Kom Ons Jol on kykNET (Dstv 144).
She appeared in the role of Ivanka in the kykNET soap Binnelanders and Mieke in Getroud met Rugby. She also had roles in the Afrikaans drama series Vlug na Egipte and the follow-up series Terug na Egipte.
Her filmography includes roles in movies ranging from Meisies wat Fluit and Last Days of American Crime, to Semi-Soet, Klein Karoo, Die Windpomp, Mooirivier, Strikdas, Hollywood in my Huis, Vuil Wasgoed, Thys & Trix as well as Deon Meyer's action movie Jagveld distributed in English as Hunting Emma.
M-Net acquired and showed a a season of the British Love Island in 2018, again in 2019 on weeknights, and followed it up with a season of the American version of the show, Love Island USA.
M-Net then broadcast the 6th season of the British Love Island since mid-April last year that was filmed at the beginning of 2020 in Constantia, Cape Town with presenter Laura Whitmore.
Besides the British version, Amazon Studios also filmed the French version, Love Island: France last year in Cape Town in South Africa. Unfortunately because of the Covid-19 pandemic, production on the season abruptly ended in mid-March 2020 with an online finale.
Rapid Blue - responsible for The Bachelor SA and the first season of The Bachelorette SA that will broadcast on M-Net soon, and that also produced the various overseas versions of Love Island in South Africa - is producing the South African version for M-Net.
The cast of Love Island SA will be announced at the end of February as they make their way into the villa. The Love Island format is owned by ITV Studios and Motion Content Group Ltd and is distributed internationally by ITV Studios.
Love Island SA will be the 20th localised version of the Love Island format.
