Is ‘Too Hot to Handle’ on Netflix Real?

By Brett White @brettwhite
Published April 17, 2020, 10:00 a.m. ET

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Too Hot to Handle

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Netflix’s newest reality show sensation is here. Too Hot to Handle mixes the tech-orchestrated shenanigans of The Circle with the relentless horniness of Love is Blind to create a concoction that is, well, to hot to handle. The reality show follows a whole bunch of single, swipe-happy hotties as they flirt and carouse in paradise. There’s just one catch: they can’t hook up! They can’t kiss and they definitely can’t have sex, and they can’t even satisfy their own, private urges! If they break any of these rules, money is immediately deducted from the $100,000 cash prize they stand to collect at the end of their repressed summer vacay. The stakes are high and the sexual tension is even higher.

But as with any reality show, you have to ask yourself, is this for real? Did these people really set foot on an island and endure a summer without sex, all looking how they look?

Is Too Hot to Handle on Netflix real?

The answer is, yes. Well, yes and no. Do I need to sit you down and tell you how reality TV works? The truth is, yes, the cast of Too Hot to Handle were not actors hired to play roles. They’re all real people with real Instagram accounts that you can follow, ones that were plenty active prior to their jaunt down to Mexico where Too Hot to Handle was filmed.

Now, is everything you see on screen unscripted reality? No. Reality shows are stories that are just as crafted as scripted content with directors and actors, just in a different way. Too Hot to Handle was crafted by the casting directors who cast the right extroverts, producers who came up with the right scenarios to run them through, and the editors who spliced together the footage in order to tell the story that the producers wanted to tell. And you can’t deny that the singles of Too Hot to Handle are reality-TV savvy individuals that probably know how to be the right kind of messy to ensure their place in the final cut, y’know? So while a lot of the show is real, all of it is produced just like every other reality show.

So now that you know that these are real people enduring a real test of their willpower, Too Hot to Handle will probably seem even more intense.

Stream Too Hot to Handle on Netflix