Love Island star Nic Vansteenberghe shed insight on his 2026 Grammys appearance sans girlfriend Olandria Carthen.
“Well, I don’t want to disclose,” Vansteenberghe told People at the Sunday, February 1, red carpet about why Carthen wasn’t there. “She’s busy working right now, so, or else she would be here.”
When the reporter asked if it was a “secret project,” Vansteenberghe confirmed. “Secret project. She told me she’d whoop me if I told, so,” Vansteenberghe quipped.
Vansteenberghe walked the red carpet at the Cypto.com Arena in Los Angeles solo, donning an all-black suit from Couture Menswear and pairing the look with jewelry from Azature.
Carthen, meanwhile, shared a collage of selfies via her Instagram Story on Sunday, captioning the pics, “Working,” alongside the airplane emoji.
Vansteenberghe and Carthen met while filming Love Island season 7, but didn’t couple up until they were both left single after a recoupling. While their romance initially fizzled off, the pair rekindled their connection later that season.
“It feels familiar. Obviously, my strong connection is no longer in the villa. This time around it is about focusing on each other and giving it 100 percent,” Nic told host Ariana Madix in a July 2025 episode. “What I can do as a man is just be there for her and take care of her as best as I can. So I am just focused on that and on making her a mean bacon, egg and cheese in the morning.”
Vansteenberghe and Carthen ultimately made it to the final four, before placing second on their season. Outside of the show, the pair felt the love from their fans.
“I feel like I’m dreaming with the amount of support from around the world. It feels great,” Carthen exclusively told Luxury Handbag Shopping for a cover story before Vansteenberghe added, “It is good to be in a room together with no one else around. It’s nice.”
As for the support they received on social media, Carthen gushed that she and Vansteenberghe are “so obsessed with every single edit.”
“We literally were just in the bed right now looking through all the edits on TikTok. Honestly, some of them kind of bring me to tears,” she admitted. “It’s like, ‘Dang, I was really oblivious to this.’ Seeing it in this format — where we started from the very beginning of the show all the way to the end — it’s such a beautiful story to witness. Which is why I feel like a lot of people resonate with our story — I just hate that we didn’t see it sooner.”
At the time, Vansteenberghe noted that he and Carthen weren’t in a rush to decide their future.
“It’s something that we haven’t labeled yet. We’re going at the comfortable pace that we want to go at. When we look at the grand scheme of things, we’re just taking our time and investing in the real world and enjoying each other’s company,” he explained. “We’re just chilling in bed together now and we are going to Disneyland later.”
