'Love Is Blind' Creator on the 'Compelling' Season 7 Reunion, Fan ...

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Rolling Stone

Chris Coelen, who also serves as the Netflix show's executive producer, talks about the latest participants in his "amazing" experiment — including how much he knew ahead of time about Tyler Francis' kids

Love Is Blind fans have plenty of questions heading into the Season Seven reunion, which streams Wednesday night on Netflix. For starters, does Ashley Adionser understand the full scope of her husband Tyler Francis’ involvement with his biological children? Will viewers learn the full scope of that situation after watching the mother of his children speak out on TikTok for the last couple of weeks? What, specifically, did Stephen Richardson text to another woman while he was engaged to Monica Davis? Does Ramses Prashad regret pressuring his former fiancé Marissa George to have sex? Are any couples from this season actually still together?

“There are a lot of loose ends that they get an opportunity to address,” says Love is Blind creator and executive producer Chris Coelen of the reunion. “I think it’s really compelling.”

But fans are expecting much more than loose ends. Not only did the drama from the show spill over to social media in an unprecedented fashion this season, but it seemed like with every drop of episodes, another couple bit the dust. These crumbling relationships have left the audience with one big question: How the heck did these people make it onto the show in the first place?

Ahead of the reunion episode, Coelen spoke with Rolling Stone about the show’s casting process and Season Seven’s major ups and downs.

This season, the couples were based in the Washington, D.C., area. Were you expecting politics to come up more in conversation because of that? And did you intentionally air this D.C. season in an election year?
No, we didn’t. That’s fortuitous timing. Politics is a subject that people are talking about more now than maybe ever in the context of dating. [The] participants in D.C. are attuned to it, but I think it’s also just a bigger part of the dating conversation now than it’s ever been.

In a New York Magazine feature, a reporter who went behind the scenes in the Love Is Blind control room said a major topic of discussion among the couples is the experience of being on the show itself. Are you open to breaking the fourth wall to bring those conversations to viewers? Do you think that would add value or take something away?
It really just depends on which moment you happen [to be] listening to them [in the control room], because I actually don’t think that’s the major topic of conversation, having witnessed a lot of the growth. The thing that they talk about most, I think, is the relationship that they’re developing and how they’re feeling.

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Certainly, it’s not a perfect science in any way, shape, or form. We’re trying our best to find and then surface the bits of the experience that represent the most accurate essence of what happened. Some of the talk around what it’s like to be on Love Is Blind might be interesting in isolation, but is it interesting in the whole picture? If it is, we put it in there for sure. I’m not afraid of putting anything on the show. Whether something happens in the pods, off-camera, or on-camera, we’re not hesitant about breaking the fourth wall. We’ve broken the fourth wall before — you remember Andrew with his tears in Season Three? It’s just about whether that contributes to the stories that we’re telling.

Only two couples made it to the altar this season, both of whom viewers were confident would say “Yes.” This felt different from past seasons, where most couples filmed at the altar when their answers could still very much be a toss-up. Do you think cast members feel more empowered not to film the wedding day now versus in the past?
They’ve always been empowered to do what they want to do. We’re documenting the choices that they make. They’re not required to do anything. In our minds, this is an experiment. The first part is whether they can fall in love with each other sight unseen. The second part of the experiment is finding out if that love is strong enough to survive whatever the real world throws at them. The experiment is designed to sort of throw everything at them all the way up to the altar. There have absolutely been couples in the past that take in the full breadth of that and have made their decision at the altar, which is how the experiment is designed. When you get to the altar, you should have all of the information you need to make that decision for real. What I think is amazing is that of the couples who have chosen to say “I do” at the altar through Season Seven, 11 couples of the 13 are still together, which to me is a huge, incredible track record of success for Love Is Blind. Granted, it’s a small sample size, but I can’t think of another way of getting married that has a better track record of success. They are tested, they are prepared, and if they say, “No,” that’s the right decision for them. If they get to the altar and they see the experiment all the way through and they say, “I do,” amazing. If they get to a place where they don’t really see it through the altar, then I think it’s kind of a waste of everyone’s time to just go through the motions.

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A lot of people were disappointed that Leo Braudy and Brittany Wisniewski’s relationship didn’t continue on-camera after they got engaged. You’ve explained that there wasn’t enough of a budget to follow around more than six couples. Why did you decide to cut them specifically?
In a way, it’s sort of a show that casts itself, in that we invite participants to come into the pods, but who ends up falling for who and who ends up getting engaged and who ends up not, we don’t have any control over any of that. We’ve been in these situations during a few seasons now where we’ve had more than six couples get engaged, and we really have the budget to follow five. It’s also not just about budget; it’s about doing justice to the story. Even if we had the budget and wanted to follow eight couples, you’ve got hour-long episodes, and you’re giving each couple about six or seven minutes per episode at that point.

We’re interested in authenticity. That’s not a character judgment so much as it is: Do we believe that this couple actually intends to and has a shot to make it to the altar? If it’s a couple or if it’s people who are like, “I want to be on TV and hang out” and maybe are not so genuine, or maybe one is and the other member of the couple isn’t, then that doesn’t feel right. We don’t want to reward that. Perfect Match is an example of a show where there is no expectation of a marriage at the end of it. People’s motivations can be much more varied on that [show], in my opinion, but when you’re on Love Is Blind, you are really earnest about wanting to find a spouse. Someone else comes in and they aren’t genuine, and they are there to toy with you for the sake of being on TV, that just feels wrong.

What do you think about viewers’ criticisms of Ramses Prashad for identifying as a progressive feminist and male ally but then taking up issues with Marissa George’s sex drive and her wanting to use condoms as birth control?
I try to keep my personal opinion out of it. My job is to provide an environment for the participants to be part of an amazing experiment and then to try to tell their stories in a way that I think does justice to what they actually experience. Do I have my own personal opinions about some of the conversations between Ramses and Marissa? Of course I do. I’m human. But my job is to document their stories.

Were you surprised to learn about the situation with Tyler Francis’ kids that’s been unfolding online as the season has aired?
I personally didn’t know about it. We don’t film 24/7, and people definitely have conversations off-camera, and we aren’t privy to all of those. Everybody has a story, and everybody comes to their life, let alone Love Is Blind, with whatever they carry with them. That can be as profound as having children, whether you’re actively raising them or not, or it can be something that happened in your past. We don’t police what people say or don’t say, or tell each other or don’t tell each other. We don’t force anyone to say anything that they don’t want to. What’s important for Tyler and Ashley is they ultimately make sure that they are solid and they have an understanding between themselves. It doesn’t really matter what Joey on Instagram thinks. What matters is their marriage.

We do background checks, we do psychological evaluations, but that’s to make sure that you’re a good candidate to be on the show. Being a good candidate to be on the show should be inclusive of many kinds of people with many kinds of stories and many kinds of backgrounds. And again, what they choose to say about themselves or not say is completely up to them. It doesn’t make them a good person or bad person.

In addition to the background checks and psychological evaluations, what else goes into the vetting process when casting?
The first thing that we’re looking for is somebody whose primary motivation is, if they find someone and fall in love with them, that they are genuinely interested in being married and making that kind of commitment. If their primary motivation is fame, they really shouldn’t be participating, because it’s not fair to the other participants. Somebody who’s completely disingenuous about wanting to get married is what we will try to screen or edit out. We’re doing background checks and psychological evaluations. Those aren’t about, “Have I dated 100 people or two people?” It’s not about whether you have a good relationship with your mother or not.

There are a lot of different forms of unscripted programming, and in many of them, if you’re on YouTube, TikTok, or you’re an influencer, your personality is driving so much of the fandom around that, and the backbone of the show. That is not the case on Love Is Blind. One of the great things about Love Is Blind is that ordinary people are in extraordinary circumstances, making the most important decision of their life and striving for something. That’s so aspirational and relatable. So it’s better and more interesting that the people who participate are real people.

For a lot of reality shows these days, including Love Is Blind, it seems like people on social media are the ones doing a lot of digging to find information about cast members. What do you think about that trend?
For the people who do the “sleuthing” or are making this allegation or that allegation and coming forth with some information, there’s different motivations for those people. I think some people are having fun with it. Some people are what I would call clout-chasers. Some people are opportunists. I think: Great to all of that. Whatever those people want to do is awesome. What’s most important are the couples’ stories.