You may have noticed that Love Is Blind season eight is a lot, well, whiter than previous seasons. Fans online certainly have. But the series’ creator insists that this wasn’t on purpose. Instead, he claims, the Love Is Blind contestants just kind of self-selected, and that’s the reason for the lack of diversity. Hmm…
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, creator Chris Coelen said, “The show casts itself.” He explained, “We put people in the pods, and you try to have a very diverse group of people in lots of different ways [at the start]. And then the people who get engaged are the people who get engaged. The people who fall in love are the people who fall in love.” Of the 10 people who left the pods engaged, only two were not white, except Monica, who identifies as half Chilean. Additionally, while earlier seasons started the pods with 50% white and 50% nonwhite cast, this year’s was about 70% white.
Coelen continued, “If you’re sort of trying to tick a box, there were lots of people who were in the group coming into the pods who ultimately just didn’t find their person and who we didn’t choose to [follow].” It is perhaps also worth noting that the show did follow couples who did not end up getting engaged, notably the Meg-Mason-Madison-Alex quadrangle, who were also all white.
As the show has gone on, Love Is Blind fans have expressed their frustrations at the lack on diversity this season on social media. Commenters on Instagram asked, “Where is the diversity?????” While others wrote more detailed critiques, such as, “DIVERSITY IS NOT ONLY ABOUT BLACK PPL. Where are the Asians, Hispanics, Africans, This season lacked diversity and depth in so many ways.”
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On Twitter, one user joked, “If ANYTHING shows the importance for DEI, it should be this new season of #LoveIsBlind. Because there’s no way you’re casting these 5 men on the same show, giving them all a large amount of camera time, & expecting me to know the difference,” with pictures of Daniel, Alex, Mason, Ben, and Dave.
