Love Is Blind is a unique reality show for several reasons — but the Netflix series has rules just like other dating experiments.
Season 1 featured six couples who got engaged after communicating via soundproof pods and never seeing each other’s faces.
“We didn’t want any sound to bleed through any other pods. We basically had a small speaker in the front wall, and you would hear the other person who was in the other pod. [There are] no producers in there, there’s nobody else,” creator Chris Coelen told Variety in 2020. “It’s just you and the other person. That’s it.”
While four duos — Giannina Gibelli and Damian Powers; Kelly Chase and Kenny Barnes; Jessica Batten and Mark Cuevas; Carlton Morton and Diamond Jack — split (at various points of the show) during season 1, two couples are still going strong: Lauren Speed and Cameron Hamilton and Amber Pike and Matt Barnett.
“We do a lot of diligence on the cast and we invite people to participate who we’ve done lots of vetting on, who exhibit an authentic desire and interest to actually finding someone to fall in love with and if they find that person, to get married to,” Coelen explained in a 2022 interview. “We want somebody who’s genuinely interested in a committed relationship. That’s really the first thing that we’re looking for. And then beyond that, we have a big enough pool that we try to invite people of all shapes, sizes, backgrounds and walks of life.”
Season 2 of Love Is Blind also had two successful marriages, with Jarrette Jones and Iyanna McNeely exchanging vows and Nick Thompson and Danielle Ruhl tying the knot. (The two pairs ultimately split one year later.)
The other twosomes included Deepti Vempati and Abhishek “Shake” Chatterjee, Salvador “Sal” Perez and Mallory Zapata, Shayne Jansen and Natalie Lee and Kyle Abrams and Shaina Hurley.
“As producers, we don’t have any control over what happens. We don’t try to exert or sway over any of the participants,” Coelen continued. “We won’t ever tell them what to say, what to do, how to think, how to feel. This is entirely documenting their real journey. So we build the machinery, and then they go into it and they have their own experience and as a producer, that’s frightening, because you don’t have any control, but it’s also exhilarating, because it’s incredible, it’s authentic. We had eight engagements in the season, we chose to follow — just like in season 1 — six of them, because you only have so much bandwidth.”
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Seasons 1 and 2 of Love Is Blind are streaming on Netflix. Scroll through for a list of rules regarding the production of the show:
