Love Island All-Stars’ Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu has spoken out about the heartbreaking bullying she suffered as a teen – and revealed the novel way she recently got her revenge on one of her tormentors.
The 30-year-old actress and reality star is currently in a relationship with Curtis Pritchard, 29, after they fell for each other on the recent All Stars version of the ITV dating show which finished last month.
But while Ekin-Su is now back on top career-wise, it’s been a hard time for her in the past two years – as the cruelty she faced from trolls brought back memories of the abuse she suffered as a teen.
Fortunately however, she’s now stronger than ever – and now, after a chance run-in on the street, she’s finally got her own back on those who belittled her at school. It’s been a long time coming.
Ekin-Su had just started secondary school in London when she started getting picked on for her name and size. The more she was picked on the more she ate and the worse the bullying became – including one time when she was pushed down the stairs.
“Basically, I felt like an alien. I had these I had quite hairy legs at the time,” she said. “You’re a child, but then you had all the other girls with Prada bags and Prada shoes and fake tan and mascara on. I was never fitting in [with] that. I was kind of the dork, the teacher’s pet. I used to eat my school lunch in the toilets a lot.
“The extreme bullying happened from Year Seven to Year Nine. I was quite big when I was in Year Seven, chubby. I got pushed down the stairs, I was being called fat, being called ugly, [there was] racism.”
Ekin-Su, who has Turkish and British, adds: “You think that your life’s gonna end. You think ‘This is what I deserve’,” she recalled. “I didn’t tell anyone because my mom was pregnant with my brother at the time, I didn’t want to stress her out.
“My best friend, funny enough, was chocolate. I used to eat a lot as comfort. I would snack a lot because I felt happiness and comforting. It was like a weird bond.”
The Traitors US star became so obsessed with what the bullies were saying she Googled ‘how to lose weight’ and put herself on a severe and unhealthy diet and began doing intense bouts of skipping.
“I fancied a guy at school who wouldn’t even look at me,” she said. “So, I lost weight, and all of a sudden people started looking at me and fancying me. And then I did [a] beauty pageant after that, which was wild.”
That was the beginning of Ekin-Su regaining her confidence. But it wasn’t until she had become an overnight star on the 2022 series of Love Island that she really got the opportunity to heal her past hurt. After falling for Davide Sanclimenti on the show, Ekin-Su suddenly found herself in high demand. Big brands wanted her to model their clothes, other companies were handing over cash for endorsements and everyone wanted selfies – including one of her old bullies.
“I saw them on the high street,” she told Jaime Laing’s Great Company podcast, out tomorrow. “One of them looked absolutely ridiculous. And one of them was like, ‘Can I have a picture with you?’ I went, ‘Do I know you?. Oh, you’re that guy from school’. And I just passed [on the photo], and I walked off. It was the best feeling ever.”
It had been a long road for Ekin-Su. After losing weight at school she became preoccupied with her appearance and began craving the attention it brought. That’s when she started doing more and more pageants, which she now believes send a really bad message to youngsters.
“That’s when I started to become obsessed with what I looked like,” she said. “These pageants that I did were very all about what you look like, the perfect person, beauty. Very wrong message by the way, but when you’re young, unfortunately, I got influenced by that.”
Now Ekin-Su is taking a very different approach. She advises anyone who was in her shoes to confide in someone immediately. “I would say, please speak to someone, whether that’s a teacher, a friend or someone, don’t bottle it in,” she said. “There’s always help out there, free help. There’s loads of websites where you can talk to someone. I would also say [the ordeal] is going to make you a stronger person. And those bullies at school are going to end up below you, because that is what happened [to me].”
While Ekin-Su isn’t keen on the pageant world now, she does admit competing helped her confidence return. She actually remembers it happening while singing in one of her early competitions.
“All of a sudden, this confidence came out, and my performative side, again came out,” said former psychology student, Ekin-Su. “And it went on forever. It was almost like ‘I’ve done the bullies, [so] What’s the worst that can happen in life’? I’ve had hate, I’ve had bullying. [So] just love life, you know.
“I understand bullies as an adult, I feel like it’s a reflection of who they are. Because they hate themselves. If they want to make you feel bad,” she told Jamie. “You can’t [stop bullying] this is the sad thing. You can change, and you can control yourself in the situation, because bullying happens even now, right? It happens in everyday work. There’s always a manager or a boss or a colleague that just doesn’t like you. You just have to accept it, and when you know that that’s life, you can move on.
She added: “Even now, probably people hate me for no reason. That’s fine. Hate is an emotion. You’ve only got to worry when no one has no feelings towards you.”
Ekin-Su admits that she’s had to work hard at keeping this positive attitude after the past two years especially after leaving Celebrity Big Brother and being booed. The trolls sent death threats and she ended up seeking help after locking herself away in her flat.
“Obviously, there was a lot of hate going on,” she told Jamie. “Coming out to a lot of hate and death threats and people saying, you know, like, ‘you don’t deserve to be alive’. ‘I’m going to come and find you and kill you’, like all these really nasty things. ‘You deserve to be bullied’. It is triggering. It triggers things. And I was in my flat, and I was just sitting on the floor and just burst into tears for a good three hours, just crying.
“Then I remember having this phone call, and someone said, ‘Ekin please speak to a therapist. I’m shaking talking about it, but I said no. And they were like, no, you need to speak to a therapist. You’ve not left your flat, you’re not eating, you’re not you’re not yourself’.
“I had my therapy session, and after that one session, I kind of they were like, ‘Right. You need to take yourself away for a week self-care. You need to switch off your phone and realise that you haven’t done anything wrong’. Like the feeling is temporary. It’s not real.
“It’s horrible. I never thought I’d be in that place. I always thought, oh my God. Like when people feel this low, surely, they can get back up, until it happens to you. It is a very dark place, and I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone, anyone, whoever you are. .”
* Great Company with Jamie Laing is out Wednesday, March 12 and available from all podcast providers
**If you or a loved one are dealing with the issues of bullying, body image and self confidence, contact the National Bullying Helpline on 0300 323 0169, or visit www.youngminds.org.uk. If you need immediate help, call Samaritans on 116123