‘Love Is Blind’ Creator on Vetting Process Amid Season 7 Cast Drama: “We Aren’t the Police”

Season seven of Love Is Blind took its cameras to Washington D.C. for its seventh season, bringing together a group of diverse singles in the nation’s capital with the shared goal of finding a spouse — or at least a romantic connection of some sort.

“The timing with the election was coincidental,” creator of the Netflix reality dating series Chris Coelen tells The Hollywood Reporter. Still, throughout the season, audiences cast their ballot for which couples they thought would make it past the decision-making altar. In the final episode, only two pairs, Ashley and Tyler and Taylor and Grant, said “I do,” and on Wednesday night’s reunion special, viewers went onto learn whether those unions remained intact, while also gaining insights on the downfall of the other five couples who left the pods together but ultimately split before their wedding day.

Going into the Love Is Blind: The Reunion special, Coelen talked with THR about the tricky moments that were teased in the show trailer, like Hannah proclaiming Nick wanted to be the most famous person on Love Is Blind, and the social media controversies that have developed around cast members like Tyler, who waited until episode nine to tell then-fiancée Ashley that he was the father of three children.

***

Over the seasons, audiences have given feedback that hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey can be too light on some of the participants, or that people aren’t held accountable for their actions. How do you approach the reunion specials?

There are different kinds of reunions. There are some reunions on certain kinds of unscripted shows that are very much just about the drama, and I think that our reunions are very much a mix. There’s an opportunity to close up loose ends, but there’s also very much a celebratory feel. We’ve witnessed people aspire to these incredible and very relatable goals of finding someone to spend their life with and some people, in some cases have found that, and I think that’s certainly worth celebrating. I think even the people who didn’t necessarily find that but yet found something that they’ve taken away from it that’s transformed them in some way is also worth celebrating. I also really enjoy the fact that we started to — as of last season’s reunion, which continues with this season’s reunion — bring back some participants from previous seasons. That’s a real treat for me, and I think for the fans, and for them.

In terms of Nick and Vanessa, I think you’re never going to make everyone happy. There’s always going to be people who are unhappy no matter what you do. I think they do a good job of trying to balance asking the questions that people want to ask and being a voice for the audience. Then just very much wanting to see people succeed as well. They’re not there as interrogators. I think there are lots of things that happen on Love Is Blind that are really, really fascinating. And ultimately, I think the couples are in the best place to answer for themselves versus us trying to attack them.

Tyler choosing not to disclose that he has children until late in the season has brought up questions about the vetting process. What can you share about vetting participants on Love Is Blind?

Well, a couple things. One is we have a very rigid vetting process. We have background checks and psychological evaluations. Everyone in the world has a story and we aren’t the police. We don’t regulate or monitor their conversations whether they’re being filmed or not, by the way. We’re not dictating to them what they should talk about, what they shouldn’t talk about. If someone has children or doesn’t have children, that doesn’t preclude them from participating in the process. If someone has a bad relationship with their mother or someone’s had a certain sexual experience in the past or someone is in debt, all those things are very common for the vast majority of people. Everyone has stuff. Everyone’s lived life, and our job is not to make sure that everyone talks about everything. Our job is to provide them a forum that they use how they wish to see if they can connect with someone and fall in love and, hopefully in the process because it contributes to them being in love, be very open and transparent with each other, even through some topics that can be very difficult. It’s not our obligation to report to everyone everything that you might find interesting. That’s not really our place, because our job is to document that.

Number two, I think it’s important to say that we don’t film 24/7. That’s a lot of time and we don’t want to. We think it’s important that the participant have off-camera time as well as on-camera time. And for them to really get the full picture of who one another is before they get to the altar and make a decision. So we try to help them have all kinds of experiences. There’s no way for me to sit here and say I know what people talk about off camera. So what I would say is really the question is best posed to Tyler and Ashley and, what do they think and how do they feel? And that’s something you’ll see at the reunion. Tyler and Ashley don’t have an obligation to Joey from Instagram. They just don’t. And Joey from Instagram, I’m glad Joey has an opinion, but that doesn’t really make any difference to whether Tyler and Ashley have worked through something or not in a way that makes sense to them.

That leads to a question about Tim and Alex and not getting to see two of the big moments that led to the demise of their relationship on the show. Was that an instance of you not filming at the time?

Listen, if we were filming, it would’ve been on the show. We’re super transparent. There are some producers in the unscripted space whose philosophy is, if it doesn’t happen on camera, it doesn’t happen. That is not my philosophy. The philosophy we have on Love is Blind is whatever happens, we want to do our best to be able to explain what actually happened. That’s what we try to do and sometimes that can be frustrating for people. “Well, why didn’t we see that?” Because we weren’t filming, or as Alex just said publicly, there were certain things Tim wanted to keep off camera. And by the way, probably to their detriments. And again, I don’t know if that’s true, I just know that’s what she said. So we can’t control that. And if that’s something that they’re going to do, then that’s something they’re going to do, but we certainly want to get them to then talk about it.

We also saw in the preview trailer that Hannah accuses Nick of being on the show for disingenuous reasons, which is not a new claim. As the show continues to gains popularity, has it gotten harder to determine who’s really there for love versus who’s hoping to be internet famous?

Well, you can never know what really is going on in someone’s heart, in someone’s head. Only the person living it really knows that. I also think just because you’re interested in participating in Love is Blind or being on TV, that doesn’t mean that you don’t also want love. The two things can coexist very peacefully. For us, and sometimes we’re wrong, we try to discern whether or not someone’s primary motivation is in the big if. If, in the instance that they find someone they fall in love with, are they truly interested in being married?

That’s the big if regardless of any other factors. And I think we do a pretty good job of vetting for that, and that’s something I care a lot about. I also think people say things in the moment when they’re hurt or in the heat of an emotional moment that comes from a place of anger. We’ll see for ourselves when the reunion airs tonight, but I certainly have my own perspectives on that. I think that we can all see what went down and form our own opinion about it.

A moment that was really praised was the conversation between Marissa, Ramses and her friends about being in the military and the current situation in Palestine. Can you talk about choosing to include that in the edit?

Absolutely. I think it was relevant to them. It’s interesting when I see people comment, “oh, this season they’re wanting to put stuff like that in, on last season they didn’t, or the previous,” and none of that is true. We basically want to reflect what’s important to them. If people are talking about things that have to do with finances and that becomes the thing that’s most important to them, then that’s what’s going to end up on the show. And if it’s a conversation with Marissa and Ramses— and it’s a very, very layered conversation about their ceremony and what that’s going to look like, the military and, ultimately, the subsequent conversation about Palestine and him being from Venezuela and there are all kinds of interpretations of that conversation from people who watch it — again, our job is to try to reflect what is important to each of their stories. And that was really important to their story and that’s why it was included.

I also think as Love is Blind has evolved over the seasons; our society has evolved and Love Is Blind is reflective of our society and where we are and what people care about, what people talk about at any given time. So the things that people are talking about in the current season are very different in some ways; it’s shifted. People do talk more about politics, I’ve witnessed, than they did five years ago for sure. And that’s exciting. And by the way, it makes the show ever-changing and different and unpredictable because you never know what people are going to get into or what they’re going to find important.

Leo and Brittany had a reveal moment in episode five and it was noted that they broke off their engagement a few weeks later after taking their own trip to Miami. Why didn’t cameras follow them on that journey?

A lot of times the stories that we’re able to present on the show are not actually known to us until after we’re done filming. And part of the joy of the post-process on the show is the discovery of that information. So when we’re in the pods and deciding which couples to film with, no matter how many, we don’t always follow everybody. We try to follow people who we believe authentically have a shot to get to the altar and say “I do” — what the show’s about.

In the case of Leo and Brittany, we had seven couples who had gotten engaged. We generally have the budget to follow five, sometimes we will stretch to six. Who knows, maybe someday we will do seven. That doesn’t mean we tell five stories or six stories on the show, but we have the budget to follow that if we choose. And we just felt like they were the ones who were probably the least likely [to marry] and, of course, that turned out to be true. And I think Leo and Brittany would agree with that. They’ll certainly talk about it at the reunion tonight. I wouldn’t have thought that we would’ve ever actually told Leo and Brittany’s story on the show at all. The only reason that we did is because we chose to follow Hannah and Nick. And as we started digging into the footage of Hannah and Nick, we realized, and I didn’t know this at the time in as robust a way as I do now, in the pods how really connected Leo and Hannah were. I had no idea any of that was going on. So you can’t really tell a story of Hannah in the pods without also telling Leo’s story. You have to tell Leo’s story to really get a full picture of what Hannah was going through. And you can’t really tell Leo’s story without telling Brittany’s story. So we decided that we would tell all of those stories and then just own the fact that we didn’t follow them. That’s the decision we made.

In seasons one through four, there were “After the Altar”specials. Are there plans to continue that?

No. Not interested in doing that.

Why not?

It sounds fun to catch up, and that’s one of the reasons with the reunion now — it’s fun to catch up and see where some of your favorites have been. But when you get into an “After the Altar” structure, it becomes more like a docuseries. And docuseries, as many people know, are really driven by drama. And to go into an “After the Altar” with Brett and Tiffany or Zach and Bliss or whoever, where’s the drama going to be? It doesn’t feel real; it feels like at that point you’re just making something that’s kind of for the sake of making it. It’s not an exciting idea for a show. It doesn’t really feel fulfilling to me as a producer. And I think, ultimately, even though people liked it to some extent, I just don’t think it’s that great.

***

Love Is Blind: The Reunion is now streaming on Netflix.