‘Love Is Blind’ Report Reveals Contestants Were Paid Below Minimum Wage, Deprived Of Food And Sleep On Set After 20-Hour Days

A number of former Love Is Blind contestants have come forward with allegations of “emotional warfare” conducted by producers and poor living conditions behind the scenes.

Speaking to Business Insider, the former cast members revealed they were often deprived of food and sleep during their 20-hour work days and received little to no emotional support from producers despite the show’s high stakes.

“It’s a lot,” Season 1 contestant Brianna Holmes said. “None of it was scripted. Everything you see is real. These are people’s real lives and real emotions.” 

On Love Is Blind, young singles go on blind dates for ten days, during which they must decide if they want to get engaged or go home. The couples only get to see each other once they’re engaged. They are then sent on a group vacation before they’re expected to return to their hometowns and plan their weddings.

But the show’s high stakes leave a real-life impact on its contestants, long after the show airs on Netflix. “You thrust us into this situation without any support, and everything’s amplified,” Season 2 Nick Thompson said. “It literally ruins lives.” 

During Season 2, Thompson had married Danielle Ruhl, who experienced panic attacks and suicidal thoughts while filming. She revealed she attended trauma therapy after filming the show. “I don’t think that I’ve felt myself since before filming,” she said.

The long days of filming deeply affected their sleeping habits, multiple cast members said.

“The sleep deprivation was real,” Danielle Drouin, a Season 1 contestant, said. “I feel like they do it on purpose because they’re trying to break you. They want you on your edge.”

These “inhumane working conditions” were cited in the lawsuit Season 2 contestant Jeremy Hartwell filed in July against Netflix and Kinetic Content, the show’s production company. The lawsuit claims the contestants were paid around $7.14 per hour, around half of California’s minimum wage, since they regularly worked up to 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

Hartwell’s attorney Chantal Payton said producers “intentionally underpaid the cast members, deprived them of food, water and sleep, plied them with booze and cut off their access to personal contacts and most of the outside world. This made cast members hungry for social connections and altered their emotions and decision-making.”

“While we will not speculate as to his motives for filing the lawsuit, there is absolutely no merit to Mr. Hartwell’s allegations, and we will vigorously defend against his claims,” Kinetic Content said in a statement to Variety at the time.

Some contestants claimed they turned to producers for emotional support both during and after the show, but to no avail. Cast members also said producers would use the sensitive details they learned during one-on-one interviews to “elicit whatever emotional response they wanted,” saying it sometimes felt like “emotional warfare.”

Ruhl had previously revealed that she struggled with her weight in the past, which producers later brought up during her on-camera interviews. “They would use these things to kind of cut you down day over day,” she said. “The interviews were horrible.”

While some couples successfully found love on the show, other cast members revealed they struggled to return to their normal lives after filming the show. A Season 1 cast member quit her job because it reminded her of her negative experience on the show. She also received hate messages online because of how she was portrayed on the show.

The reality show’s bizarre premise made it into a bonafide hit when it premiered just before the pandemic in 2020. The show’s few success stories like Lauren Speed-Hamilton and Cameron Hamilton, who are still together, keeps viewers coming back to see if the dating experiment actually works.

But these concerning reports show the dating experiment has some serious ethical qualms to deal with before it continues.