“Love Is Blind” — but the viewers aren’t.
The hit Netflix dating series is receiving criticism from fans online for the lack of diversity with its Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Season 8 cast.
Viewers have called out the fact that the majority of the 32 contestants on this season are white — whereas the first seven seasons had about a 50/50 split between white and non-white contestants.
Creator and executive producer Chris Coelen responded to the criticism on Wednesday.
“Well, the show casts itself,” Coelen told Entertainment Weekly. “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.”
He 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].”
Coelen noted it’s hard for the show to tell the story of all 32 contestants on Season 8 — which is the biggest cast in the series’ history.
So, Coelen said that producers have to pick and choose which storylines they show. And in the case of this season, the white contestants have gotten the most airtime.
“It’s like [how] we chose to tell the Madison-Meg-Mason-Alex story because it felt really worthwhile telling,” the TV producer explained. “There are 32 stories times however many people each person dates. So if each person starts off dating 16 people, do the math, that’s, I don’t know, close to 1,000 stories? Something like that. And you can only tell so many of them.”
Coelen went on, “We always, always, always strive to seed the pods for the greatest possible success, and within that, diversity of not only ethnicity or race, but backgrounds, and financial status, and body types and looks and all that stuff.”
“You’re less concerned about that, to be honest, than just trying to have a group of people that you hope are somewhat compatible and then seeing what happens,” he said. “And like I said, then they cast the show for us. We don’t decide, ‘Oh, this is a good couple. That’s a good couple.’ We don’t steer it in any way. They figure it out on their own.”
The Minnesota “Love Is Blind” season is way less diverse than the past installments of the show set in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Charlotte, and Washington D.C.
“Who thought it was a good idea to have 5 FULL episodes of white ppl talking non stop,” one viewer posted on X (formerly Twitter).
“All these white people who i can NOT tell apart,” another fan tweeted.
Someone else wrote, “I was going to watch the new season of Love Is Blind, but the streets are saying it’s whiter than a Taylor Swift concert. so, hard pass.”
A different viewer said, “5 episodes deep into Love is Blind and can’t tell these white men apart.”
“The diversity this #LoveIsBlind season is completely non-existent huh,” added another fan.
“Love Is Blind” Season 8 premiered with the first six episodes on Valentine’s Day. New episodes drop every Friday until the reunion special on March 7.
