Love Is Blind season 4 may have just ended, but the series is being called out in a major way, due to a brand-new exposé, which details less-than-glamorous aspects of the production. Though stars like Tiffany Pennywell and Brett Brown found love on the show, others were not so lucky when it came to matters of the heart or mind. Many participants have had terrible experiences filming the series, and not just emotionally. The toll that LIB has taken on some cast members’ mental health, along with the damage it seems to have done to their relationships, is huge. It casts a dark shadow over the series.
Several cast members have opened up about their experiences, like Love Is Blind season 2’s Nick Thompson and Danielle Ruhl. The article gave details on the process that takes place behind the scenes of the Netflix reality dating show. With harrowing conditions and difficult contracts, the cast members have a hard time advocating for themselves in the presence of the manipulative production team. With some ironclad contracts that put tons of money on the line, the Love Is Blind cast members have no choice but to risk their mental health in order to continue filming the series. They do so despite the emotional cost.
5 Love Is Blind Requires A Major Emotional Commitment
Love Is Blind is an experiment that is meant to create a deep, meaningful connection in mere weeks. Though it is supposed to foster lasting connections between cast members, the journey can be rough, and it’s not always easy or healthy. As viewers are aware, the cast spends time in the Love Is Blind pod phase, where they try to build relationships without physical connections. The emotional bandwidth this takes from the participants is, at times, overwhelming. According to Business Insider, the cast takes on, “20-hour filming days” with, “the pressure to get engaged…in under two weeks,” without understanding how mentally taxing it can be.
With cast members signing contracts that keep them feeling like captives on the show, it’s clear that Love Is Blind can be a very different experience than some cast members imagined. According to Love Is Blind celeb Briana Holmes, camera operators were instructed to film every moment, including the difficult ones. When Briana had a panic attack, she tried to leave the set to get some privacy. She stated, “they literally chased me off of the set to the trailers, cameras in my face.” It was not the experience that Briana or the other cast members thought they signed up for.
4 Cast Members Are Paid Very Little & May Face Fines For Leaving
According to Business Insider, Love Is Blind cast members sign a contract that allows them to be filmed for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for, “up to eight weeks for a weekly stipend of $1,000 that has a cap of $8,000.” While the cast members do get to go back to work after the first few weeks, the way their contracts are drawn up causes discrepancies in the way that they’re paid. Ultimately, “their $1,000 weekly stipend translated to…$7.14[/hr],” which is less than US minimum wage. Conversely, if Love Is Blind cast members leave the show earlier than production would like them to, they can contractually be fined up to $50,000.
3 Mental Health Care Isn’t Prioritized For Love Is Blind Cast Members
After being criticized for not prioritizing cast members’ mental health, it became clear that Love Is Blind needed to make a change. While an on-call therapist is provided for other reality shows, Love Is Blind does not utilize mental health professionals during the show’s pod phase. Contestants have felt that producers doubled as mental health specialists, and believed that this caused a rift between the cast and production. One participant explained that the production team refused to let them finish an emotional conversation with a potential match. The talk was about shared grief over the loss of their parents, and having the chat limited disgusted the LIB star.
Love Is Blind season 2’s Nick explained that he, “received roughly three calls between filming and the show’s premiere, with each lasting only a few minutes.” He spoke with a professional hired by the production company. The calls were perfunctory, and according to Nick, even when he shared that he was struggling, the professional wasn’t helpful. Nick stated that when he asked for help, “they would say, ‘OK, let us know if you need anything…It felt like checking a box.” The lack of support in even the most dire situations, including one contestant’s pleas for counseling after having suicidal ideation, is appalling. This show is supposed to prioritize emotional relationships.
2 The Love Is Blind’s Cast’s Living Conditions Weren’t Idyllic
Though Love Is Blind tends to show off their luxurious living quarters during the pod phase of the series, it seems that the cast members do not actually live within the “living quarters” during the filming of the series. During the first season of the show, cast members were horrified by the living quarters that they were meant to share. According to production staff and the show’s celebs, they were “expected to sleep in drab trailers crammed with bunk beds during the 10 days dating in the pods. All 15 women were to stay in one single-room trailer, with the 15 men in another.”
Some cast members were so uncomfortable with the bunk beds and trailers, especially after finding bugs, that they tried to sleep in the studio space while filming went on elsewhere. After participants complained about the conditions, Love Is Blind switched things up, and began moving cast members to nearby hotels. This still caused issues, due to long and grueling filming days. Cast members explained that they got very little sleep, especially during the pod phase, and were expected to be “on” (i.e. ready for cameras) at all times, whether they had proper rest or not.
1 Love Is Blind’s Production Staff Were Unavailable & Manipulative
Many cast members explained that they felt isolated from speaking to production, or coming to them with issues, because when they did bring things up, they would be ignored. If they weren’t, production would manipulate the situations they were in to make better television. Instead, they should have actually dealt with cast members’ problems. An anonymous production assistant stated that, whenever possible, they were meant to uphold, “That weird cult vibe of, ‘Don’t talk to them, they can’t talk to you.’ It’s all about the isolation.” While this must have worked in some situations, others were more difficult, and required actual attention from the production team.
During Love Is Blind season 2, Danielle believed that she’d contracted COVID-19, which led production to keep her isolated during an event. Danielle had a panic attack, anxious about how the situation would be handled on the show. She hid in the closet, “to ensure it wouldn’t be filmed.”
Later, her then-fiance Nick returned to their room, and he, “took off his microphone and threw it at the producers…announcing that they were done with the show and sick of being exploited.” The production team reassured the couple that their Love Is Blind story would be told with accuracy, but ultimately wound up using the footage to make it seem like Danielle was jealous that Nick spoke to another woman.
