‘Love Is Blind’ Creator Addresses Live Reunion Controversy & Possible Queer Version
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There is no doubt that Love Is Blind has been a smash hit for Netflix, but when the streamer tried to air its second-ever live telecast for the show’s Season 4 reunion on April 16, things quickly fell apart.
A technical issue kept the reunion from airing live as scheduled; instead, it was pre-taped and aired the next day. At the time, fans rushed to social media to complain and ask what on earth was going on.
“I lost my mind,” said Love Is Blind creator Chris Coelen in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I was sitting in front of my TV like, ‘What is happening? Give me the updates. What’s going on?’”
Coelen explained how it was Netflix’s idea to do a live reunion, and he wasn’t there during the filming of the episode. “They came to us, and we all had some misgivings about it,” he shared. “But, collectively, we decided that if we’re going to do it, we’re going to bring in my former client, [Jeopardy! producer] Michael Davies. We’d done some shows with him in the past. So we weren’t actually producing it.”
He said he’d usually be the one in the control room, talking to the hosts, Vanessa and Nick Lachey, via their earpieces. But in the case of the live reunion, he wasn’t the one in charge.
“But I know a lot of people put a lot of effort into it,” Coelen continued. “I was sitting in my living room getting updates about what was happening. It was a chaotic night, but I’m an optimist. Ultimately, the great thing that came out of that night was it showed how much significant interest there is in Love Is Blind. I really appreciated that.”
Love Is Blind is Netflix’s most successful unscripted series of all time, closing out 2022 with 13.1 billion minutes viewed, according to Nielsen. It’s also spent 131 days in the U.S. Top 10 over the past 18 months, more than any other original.
As for whether the show would attempt a live reunion again, Coelen said, “Possibly, but what is the benefit? I’d have to think about it and obviously talk to my partners about the real benefit of going live. A quick turnaround, sure, but we’d have to analyze if there’s a real benefit. And if we were to do it again, I would most likely be there.”
He also touched on whether fans will ever see a queer version of Love Is Blind. “TV should be broad and reflective of our world. That’s what the unscripted space does the best,” explained Coelen, who recently staged a gay version of his other dating show, The Ultimatum.
But it might be a while before we see the same for Love Is Blind, and Coelen said it’s due to production logistics.
“People are like, “Why don’t you do a queer version of Love Is Blind?” Sure, I’d love to. But you have to think about the logistics of a show. You don’t want it to be knee-jerk. In the straight version of Love Is Blind, you’ve got all the men here and all the women there. Now imagine it was an entirely queer cast. You wouldn’t produce it the same way,” he stated.
“Everyone would need to be isolated. It would be a completely different experience. You’d have to completely rethink the set and how you cast it. [But] that doesn’t mean it’s not necessarily possible.”
