Asking the big questions. Love Is Blind alum Lauren Speed called out the Netflix dating show for “cutting” Black women from story lines after the couples leave the pods.
“I don’t like how LIB be cutting all the Black women. How come they are always in the trailer but not the show… 👀,” the “We Have the Receipts” podcast host, 34, wrote via Twitter on Tuesday, October 24, before a new batch of season 3 episodes were released on the streaming platform. “I know it’s slim pickings but about 85% of them couples be forced (just moving forward for entertainment purposes) anyway. Y’all could at least force some more sisters to move forward throughout the show. 🤷🏾♀️”
Speed — who met and married husband Cameron Hamilton on season 1, which aired in 2020 — then explained to a fan in the comments that there are “couples that get engaged that aren’t even shown [in the finale cut] sometimes. I think they only show what they deem most entertaining.”
The reality TV personality is not the only person involved with the show to reveal that not everyone who finds a fiancé on the series makes the final cut. “In real life, we ended up having more success than you even see on the show, in terms of people falling in love and getting engaged in the pod part of the show,” creator Chris Coelen told The A.V. Club in February 2020. “There were more couples that got engaged than we were able to follow, which we did not expect at all. We felt like we would be lucky to have just one couple, and we had an overwhelming abundance of stories.”
He continued: “We weren’t going to throw too many story lines of people. But, I mean, if we’d had the crew to cover it, of course, we would [have]. We would have wanted to follow all of them in a heartbeat. … We sort of just closed our eyes and said, ‘Oh, maybe it’s this one, maybe it’s that one.’ Everyone on the show was tremendously real, and authentic, and gracious with allowing us to be in their life.”
Love Is Blind became an instant success after its 2020 premiere, but the show has been criticized for its apparent lack of diversity.
In July, cohost Vanessa Lachey raised eyebrows after saying she believed plus-sized contestants might have been too “insecure” to form lasting connections on the show. “Their whole life they’ve been so insecure about being themselves because of this crazy swipe generation that we are in and this catfishing world that we’re in, that they’re so afraid to be themselves,” she told Insider at the time. “I wonder if they truly don’t have enough time in those two weeks to find themselves … and then be themselves to then find that spouse.”
However, season 2 star Danielle Ruhl — who lost 70 pounds before taking part in the dating experiment — fired back at the 41-year-old Disaster Movie actress’ comments. “There were certainly more confident women than myself who participated in this experience, regardless of body type,” she told E! News before news broke of her divorce from season 2’s Nick Thompson. “I can attest that many individuals with different body types, etc. were confident, enthusiastic and optimistic about finding love.”
The Illinois native, 29, continued: “Weight doesn’t and shouldn’t define someone’s confidence and after getting to know each woman, their confidence all shined and I admired them for it.”
Season 3 of Love Is Blind is available to stream on Netflix now.
