Exclusive Interview
‘Love Island Games’: Kendall Washington Addresses His Future With Garbi Denteh Post-Elimination
Kendall Washington went into Love Island Games Season 2 to find a connection rather than win the cash prize. His mindset didn’t change when he found out that the pot was increased by $150,000. Even though his time in the villa has come to an end — courtesy of his fellow Islanders putting him in a duel — Kendall found what he was looking for with Garbi Denteh.
Kendall and Garbi, who are alums of Love Island USA Season 6 and Love Island Netherlands & Belgium Season 4, respectively, coupled up from the very beginning. But now that they’re separated, what’s next? Shortly after Kendall’s Episode 14 elimination, Swooon chatted with Kendall about his and Garbi’s romantic future, what they bonded over in the villa, and more.
Before his emotional exit, Kendall said he and Garbi didn’t have much of a chance to talk about the what their relationship would look like on the outside. The two were put in back-to-back duels with their competitors, so survival was the only thing on their minds during the latest handful of episodes.
Though he was there for love over money, Kendall said thinking about the games aspect became more and more necessary as time went on. Otherwise, he and Garbi wouldn’t even have had time to build a connection.
“I couldn’t just completely just focus on the love, the connection aspect because the whole environment was focused on, ‘Hey, how do you win this next challenge?'” he said. “Like, that was what’s going through my head. So that’s why I feel like it was harder for Garbi and I to have really as many chats about our connection as I wanted to.”
He continued, “It wasn’t really much about, okay, what does life look like after this ends? This was kind of early on, I told her about my experience on Season 6 and how I got ahead of my skis and I put a lot of faith in someone I only knew in a bubble, compared to like, I’ve never even seen them on the outside.”
Kendall added that it was something that Garbi understood as someone who’s been on the show before. “We don’t want to put pressure on each other on anything,” he said. “We know we live in two different countries, which is tough, but I know we both like each other. We both like each other, and that’s why I’m eager to have that conversation with her.”
He hopes, however, that that conversation doesn’t come too soon. He wants Garbi to keep fighting in the villa and “avenge” his elimination. He noted, “We created something really good in there, and I would hate to just see that just die right away, so I told her that when we get out, let’s talk about how we could just move forward from this and see what that looks like.”
Even though the pressure was on, especially during the last several days, Kendall said that it wasn’t all game talk all the time. “Garbi and I, when it came to not talking about challenges, we talked a lot about family and how important it is to us,” he said. “And travel. We want to travel together and a lot of our passions and a lot of that aligned.”
He also said that Garbi’s “high spunk energy” helped them bounce off each other, which allowed them to bond further. “That’s why I feel like Garbi’s energy is something that I haven’t really got to experience from a romantic side,” Kendall explained, “because typically, I’ve found myself going to the girls that don’t really match my energy. It’s kind of like opposites.”
Though they didn’t often make the final edit, Kendall and Garbi had deep conversations about where they see themselves in a few years. “We even talked about. She told me, ‘Yeah, I want to move to America eventually,’” he said, adding that the fact that they’re in different points in their lives came up, too.
Garbi is 22 years old, while Kendall is 29. “That was the only thing where it’s like, damn, it sucks that we’re not in that same phase of life,” he explained. “But we said we could still work through things because we want the best for each other, and we really found something in there.”
He continued, “I know it was only two weeks, but that’s why I don’t want to be like overly optimistic because I don’t want to jinx myself.”
We pointed out that two weeks in villa time must be pretty different to the outside world, which Kendall confirmed. He said it’s different when you’re with someone 24 hours a day without any distractions. “That’s what we both know from our Love Island experiences,” he said. “We’ve seen it work with other people, but at the end of the day, that’s why we didn’t want to put a lot of pressure on the connection side of things, but we couldn’t help [it] at most times.”
Love Island Games, Season 2, Every Night Except Wednesdays, 9/8c, Peacock
