Wearing supersized sunglasses and a grey baby tee, Olivia Attwood looks every inch the life of the party. Behind the decks of an Ibiza nightclub, she whispers something to the celebrity DJ, throws her arms in the air and commands the attention of the packed dancefloor, all bathed in a hazy red glow. Videos of the moment rack up hundreds of thousands of views, painting a picture of carefree hedonism: Olivia in her natural habitat, dancing until dawn. But the clips don't tell the whole story.
The 35-year-old presenter, podcast host and Love Island alum-turned-entrepreneur wasn't in Ibiza on holiday. She was there for four weeks filming the third series of ITV's Bad Boyfriends, the reality show she hosts in which women put their under-performing partners through relationship bootcamp. And the irony wasn't lost on her.
"It was hard," she says now, settling into a low armchair in the corner of a Soho restaurant. She’s wearing head-to-toe black, hair slicked back into a bun and a full face of glam, left over from a shoot earlier in the day. "The whole show was built around this idea that I'd trained a bad boy. So going into series three…” she pauses. “But I'd taken my own medicine. I could genuinely say to these girls, 'I got the information I needed and I left.' I had a little cry on the last day of filming because I'd been holding it all in."
Olivia is referring, of course, to the end of her relationship with footballer Bradley Dack. The pair had been together, on and off, for more than a decade, long before Olivia walked into the Love Island villa. Although she famously found ‘love’ on the show, she and Bradley reunited in 2018 before getting engaged the following year.
In June 2023, they married in a lavish ceremony at London's Bvlgari Hotel, televised as the four-part reality series Olivia Marries Her Match. "We had a really good relationship," she reflects now, with a surprising sense of calm. "When we found each other again, we healed each other in lots of ways. We made happy memories."
But under the surface of the glossy TV wedding and picture-perfect social media posts, cracks began to appear. Things reached breaking point in January, when Olivia was approached at an event by a woman who claimed Bradley had "gone back with a random girl" one night. "When you love someone, you're happy to live in the grey area," she says. "But that day, everything suddenly lined up. There was nowhere left for him to hide. As soon as I knew it had happened to me, I couldn’t stay. The only person I would be cheating is myself.
“What happened didn’t break my heart - I broke my own heart by leaving, because the easiest thing to do would’ve been to stay. Actually pulling the rug [from under our feet] and sticking to it is the hardest thing. It was f***ing brutal. It's very easy for people to sit on their high horse and go, "Oh my God, you stayed with someone that cheated.” But it’s way more complex than that,’” she adds, before a bright light catches her attention over my shoulder. “That flash is blinding me.”
Wait, is someone filming you?
“Do you think she’s filming me?”
It certainly looks like she’s filming you.
“I don’t think she knows her flash is on. That’s really awkward,” Olivia responds, seemingly unfazed. We swap seats, Olivia now shielded from prying eyes, and instead facing the restaurant’s plush curtains. It’s a small but revealing insight into her life - one that drives tabloid clicks and TikTok hot takes.
With a sip of Coke Zero, Olivia finds her natural flow again, explaining why she eventually announced the split on Instagram, in an attempt to combat spiralling speculation online. “I was surprised by the way people were willing to do backflips to villanise the woman. The narrative became so far from the truth that I had a conversation with Brad and said, ‘I actually think you should post [something].’ He said he didn’t want to, so I did, because it wasn’t fair. Why should I fall on the sword when ultimately the breakdown was nothing to do with me? I wanted the relationship to work.”
In her statement, Olivia described the situation as "utterly humiliating", not only because their relationship had played out in public, but because betrayal can carry its own sense of shame, regardless of who you are or what you do for a living. "It was multi-layered - when you disrespect your partner behind their back, whether they work in a dentist or a shop - you are humiliating them. And then to do it when I’m in this industry… I could just imagine people in the group chats going, ‘Oh my god, her fella was…’ [That feeling of] people laughing at me…. It was embarrassing. I didn’t ever want my break up or being cheated on to be my whole story - it’s just part of my story. This is the only conversation I have ever had about it, and it will be the last.”
Another thing Olivia is keen to clear up is reports about her wedding not being legally binding. “There was an insinuation that the wedding was some kind of sham,” she says now. “To what gain? I was with this person for 12 years…” It’s true that the couple didn’t sign their official wedding papers on the day, because their venue was not licensed to provide them, but they had every intention of formalising their nuptials in the weeks after the televised ceremony. “And then we quickly got into teething problems. Later, my sister said to me, ‘If it was a man who was sceptical about their partner’s honesty, and they didn’t legally bind themselves to a person, everyone would be like, ‘Good for you, because she would’ve taken half your money.’’ I did the same thing and they wanted to burn me at the f***ing stake. Where would I be now [if we had signed?] It’s been hard enough untangling our lives.” Eventually, the couple moved out of their shared Cheshire home, with Olivia relocating to an apartment in London. “When we separated our stuff, that felt like [ripping] the biggest band aid off. It all happened quite quickly.”
Seven months on, Olivia is understandably still processing what happened. She talks openly about the break up, pausing only once during our conversation to collect herself, delivering her side of the story with candour that is both matter-of-fact and quietly heartbreaking. While she still has her engagement ring in her safe (“I offered it to him and he said he didn’t want it. I looked at it once and it made me feel so sad”), she is hopeful for the future. “I still have days when it catches me off guard. If you think of it as someone who was in your life for 12 years, I’m still in the infancy of it in lots of ways. I have a job where you need to show up and look the part, so it’s very easy for people to go, ‘Oh, she doesn’t give a f***.’ But you have no idea what’s going on beneath the surface. I’m never going to pick up the phone [to record] when I’m sobbing, and there have been days when I was so upset I could barely get up off the floor.
“Quite a lot has happened [since the split.] Every relationship changes you for the better and worse. I’ve learned a lot. I’m still grieving the life I thought I was going to have, and where I’m at now at 35 is very different to where I thought I was going to be. I’m aligning my expectations, but as the months go by, I’m realising actually how much better it is.”
Finding her calling
“What do you want me to do? I can do whatever,” Olivia quips, lying across the marble bar in a black mesh catsuit on her Cosmopolitan digital cover shoot. You wouldn’t know it’s 12.21pm on a Tuesday afternoon, the bar hours away from actually opening. Sabrina Carpenter's 'Manchild' blasts through the speakers after an earlier request for "anything pop" music, and Olivia is completely at ease - on and off the table top.
The shoot runs effortlessly, and the hours pass without a hitch. It's slick. Efficient. We finish on time with a cheer - something I can vouch doesn't always happen on photoshoots. But perhaps that won’t come as a surprise to any of Olivia's 2.6 million Instagram followers, who'll know just how comfortable she is in front of the camera. It's a quality she recognises in herself, dating back to her Love Island days. Her season - series three - is often hailed as the show's golden era, catapulting the format into mainstream consciousness thanks to its authentic (read: unfiltered) cast, long before contestants arrived with a clear understanding of the opportunities the villa could unlock.
When the series wrapped in 2017, Olivia and her then-partner Chris Hughes landed their own spin-off, Crackin' On, which was the moment everything clicked. “Even though our relationship was disintegrating by the minute, I was enjoying making the show and I loved filming,” she says during our lunch the day after her shoot. “For the first time in my whole life, I felt like I was good at something. After Love Island, we were doing chat shows and little advertising jobs. I loved being in front of the camera. I always say to my bosses at ITV - the day you got me in that villa, I got a taste for it.”
After the couple's show wrapped - along with their relationship - Olivia appeared on Celebs Go Dating, and approached ITV's commissioners about breaking out on her own. They suggested she build her profile a little further, starting with The Only Way Is Essex. “I knew they were throwing me a bone, and I thought: This has to be The Liv Show.”
She fully embraced her own brief, leaning into the drama and delivering scathing one-liners with ease until, eventually, she got exactly what she'd been working towards. Olivia Meets Her Match (2020) shadowed her and Bradley’s move to Manchester, followed by her very own documentary series, Olivia Attwood: Getting Filthy Rich, in 2022. By 2024, ITV also commissioned Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection, with both shows recently being renewed for seasons four and five respectively, reaching over 233 million streams on ITVX.
In Getting Filthy Rich, Olivia explores the ways people are using their sexuality to make money, including deep dives on everything from foot fetishes to rage baiting. In The Price Of Perfection (which is currently airing its fourth season), it’s cosmetic surgery and our obsession with looking good that take centre stage. Olivia’s candid approach to her interviewees and relatable wink-wink-nudge-nudge relationship with her audience is what led ITV's Director of Reality and Acquisitions, Paul Mortimer, to call her the “face of the future” for the channel back in 2023.
“I think my strength and my weakness is that I want to make people feel comfortable all the time,” she says now, nibbling on a deep fried prawn. “It means people share things with me that maybe they weren’t planning on sharing. But it also means that I’m open with them, much to my partner or publicist’s horror. I might ask someone, ‘Oh, what’s the weirdest sex thing you’ve ever done?’ and then say, ‘By the way, last night I did X Y Z.’ Once you get on a level with someone, it’s so much easier.”
A fresh start
Alongside her documentaries, Olivia has one of the UK’s most successful female-fronted podcasts, Olivia’s House, brand deals with the likes of LOOKFANTASTIC and River Island, and her newly launched cocktail brand, Savano. Much of her success comes down to her relatability, with her Instagram feeds portraying a life of Pilates at 6am, partying at 6pm. “I haven’t had to rebrand to shift into mainstream” Olivia agrees. “I remember my agents telling me I was going to have to strip back the going-out videos and the skimpy skirts if I wanted to move into daytime TV, but I knew that people didn’t want phoney or filtered from me. I have not changed at all. I love being fun and being silly, and I can be wild, all of that is true. But I can also be on This Morning and Loose Women. I just had this delusional self belief that it was possible.”
She did have to make some bold decisions to get to where she is now, though. “There were a few years of saying quite a lot of nos - I’ve turned down hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of jobs, and TV projects that didn’t align [with my vision]. I had to have a long-term mentality. Now, I’m not having to pretend to be anyone else, or do anything insincere - I feel like I’m entering a pay-off era.”
Although Olivia says her current work-life balance is non-existent - “I haven’t had one for the last three or four years, but I’m not saying that like a badge of honour” - there is one person it would be remiss not to mention. “We can nod to him,” Olivia says with a wry smile, when I broach the subject of fellow podcaster and reality TV alum Pete Wicks. The duo have been at the centre of speculation recently after fans noticed their almost-decade-long friendship might have turned romantic. Pete, 37, finally confirmed things with an Instagram post in July, showing pictures of them cuddling on a boat in Ibiza, while Olivia’s phone background is a cosy unseen photo of them.
“It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” she says now, an uncontrollable smile giving her happiness away. “We’re both in this era where we just want peace and to enjoy life. Personality wise, I’ve never had a straight man who can go toe-to-toe with me on banter - he is the only one who can keep up. We tick a lot of the boxes that are really important in adult relationships. Pete’s a very rare person. He’s very emotionally intelligent. It’s quite remarkable.”
On whether the relationship came as a surprise, Olivia pauses for a second. “Like it is now, yes. We always got on so well but we bickered like brother and sister - never once was there ever… Once he knew I was separated, he made his feelings known, and it all happened quite quickly. Our friendship group is nauseated by us - we’re one PDA away from being exiled. I’m like, ‘who are we?’ We’re bringing out a [new] side of each other.”
Beyond that, Olivia’s focus is firmly on building from everything she's already created. “The dream would be for this [current work situation] to continue for the next decade,” she says, as we start to wrap up. “I have big aspirations for the podcast - I want to take it into live events - and for my drinks brand to live alongside my TV career.”
And yes, she plans to do all of that while spending her weekends on The White Isle - in or out of the DJ booth. “When I’m with my friends and my sister, in Ibiza, drinking a bottle of wine… Laughing until we physically hurt. Dancing, having a chill. That’s when I feel properly free.”
Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection, airs Tuesdays at 9pm on ITV2 and all episodes are now available to watch on ITVX
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