Entertainment
Love Island 2022: Show’s first ever deaf contestant Tasha Ghouri starred in MNEK music video-Robert Oliver-Entertainment – Metro
Do you recognise her?
Reckon you’ve seen Tasha before? (Picture: ITV2/ Instagram)
If you feel like you recognise new Love Island contestant Tasha Ghouri, then you should trust that feeling, because you might well be right.
Describing herself as a ‘party animal’ who’s hoping to find ‘the one’ in the villa, 23-year-old Tasha is making headlines already for being Love Island’s first ever deaf contestant.
But despite making headlines this week, Tasha, from Thirsk in North Yorkshire, already has a face that might be familiar to the millions who will be tuning in to watch her exploits in the villa.
Before being hired as an ASOS model in 2021 and appearing in a viral commercial for their earring line, Tasha appeared in the music video for Sleepwalkr and MNEK’s More Than Words back in 2020.
The video, which features a group of dancers who are ‘deaf or hard of hearing’, depicts a dance that was choreographed to explain how Tasha and her partners ‘[felt] the music’.
As MNEK performs the song for the dancers, Tasha and her troupe put a thrilling and energetic sequence together: the speakers visibly pump out More Than Words at top volume, and the dancers react to the sensations.
Tasha, who has been deaf since childbirth, has a cochlear implant which also features heavily in the opening section of the video.
Unlike other hearing aids (which amplify sound), a cochlear implant features a technical implant that sits underneath the skin to ‘provide the sense of sound by stimulating the auditory nerve directly’.
Tasha won’t be using an interpreter on the show (Picture: Instagram/@tashaghouri)
She will be aiming to repeat the achievements of Rose Ayling-Ellis, who was crowned the champion of Strictly Come Dancing late last year after becoming the BBC series’ first ever deaf contestant.
But even if she doesn’t, Tasha has already brought a lot of positive attention to the series, which has been criticised for a lack of diversity amongst its contestants in the past.
The 2022 Love Island cast have arrived! (Picture: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock)
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‘It’s great to see another major TV show like Love Island opening doors to disability inclusion,’ said one fan on Twitter.
‘Oh my god, I’ve never seen anyone with cochlear implants like me on TV,’ said another.
Love Island returns on Monday June 6 at 9pm on ITV2 and ITV Hub.
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