Former Love Is Blind contestant Lauren Speed-Hamilton has accused the show of cutting out Black women from its latest season.
Speed – who found love with cast member Cameron Hamilton in season one – took to Twitter on Monday to call out the show for limiting the amount of Black women who made it through the “pods” stage to become one of the engaged couples featured on Love Is Blind.
“I don’t like how LIB be cutting all the black women,” she wrote. “How come they are always in the trailer but not the show…”
This season, 15 women were cast for the third installment of Love Is Blind: Alexa Alfia, Amanda Langston, Ashley Randermann, Brannigan Maxwell, Charita Scott, Chelsey Jordan, Colleen Reed, Jessica Gumbert, Kalekia Adams, Kimberlee Clarke, Loren Langenbeck, Nancy Rodriguez, Raven Ross, Valerie Truong and Zanab Jaffrey. However, only five women were engaged on the show.
Speed also shed light on the way some of the couples come together on Love Is Blind, admitting that the show orchestrates some of the pairings simply because they’re entertaining.
“I know it’s slim pickings but about 85 per cent of them couples be forced (just moving forward for entertainment purposes) anyway,” she continued. “Y’all could at least force some more sisters to move forward throughout the show.”
When one fan asked Speed how she thinks producers decide which engaged couples are featured on the show, she replied: “It’s couples that get engaged that aren’t even shown sometimes. I think they only show what they deem most entertaining.”
“What do they do with those people then? Just say thank you for your time??” another fan tweeted in response.
“Yea lol send em home and stop filming them,” Speed said.
Love Is Blind, which debuted its first season on Netflix back in 2020, has previously faced criticism for what the show decides to air and not air. Former contestant Kelly Chase – who was coupled with but ultimately did not marry Kenny Barnes – recently shared a behind the scenes glimpse into why viewers only see a certain number of couples, despite multiple people getting engaged.
“Not every couple is filmed,” Chase said on TikTok earlier this week. “So, there’s 15 guys and 15 girls at the start and there are probably five men and women who get released within the first couple of days because they are not really making strong connections with anybody.”
Chase explained that this leaves just ten men and ten women remaining, but of these, only five couples are shown getting engaged. “But with season one we actually had eight couples get engaged,” she said, adding that she doesn’t know why three of the couples storylines weren’t filmed but speculates that it could be due to budget reasons.
“They just cut them and let them figure out their engagement or whatever outside of the show,” she said.
When Love Is Blind released its second season back in February, it was revealed that two other couples also left the pods engaged, but they weren’t featured on the show. Caitlin McKee, 31, a medical software salesperson became engaged to Joey Miller, 30, a business strategy consultant, in the pods. Kara Williams, 32, a client service manager, also accepted a proposal from Jason Beaumont, a 31-year-old flight attendant.
McKee and Miller shared the news of their unaired engagement and relationship on social media after the second season aired, but the two ultimately decided to go their separate ways, but are “choosing to remain friends”.
Beaumont also revealed on Instagram that he left the pods engaged when he shared photos of himself and Williams. Like McKee and Miller, he and Williams decided to part ways as well.
Chris Coelen, the creator behind Love Is Blind, has previously defended the show’s decision to feature certain couples. In an interview with Variety, Coelen explained that “a lot of guesswork” goes into deciding which couples to follow throughout the season.
“I think it’s very funny for people to say, ‘Oh, you put somebody who was, you know, heavier in there, and then you just didn’t follow them.’ It’s not like anybody wants that to happen or doesn’t want that to happen,” he said. “What I want to have happen is just to be true to the experiment. You put people in there. They can’t see each other. If they fall in love, then we follow it and if they don’t, we don’t.”
On Wednesday (26 October), Netflix dropped episodes five, six and seven of the third season of Love Is Blind. The third installment of Love Is Blind season three arrives on 2 November.
