How Love Is Blind Casts Its Singles And What It Takes To Get Noticed

Summary

Applying to Love is Blind involves submitting an application via the website and living in the casting city.
The casting team interviews around 2,000 applicants, narrowing it down to 300-400, then to 30.
The casting process focuses on authentic love connections but has been criticized for body types and lack of diversity.

As Love is Blind is about to enter its 7th season, exactly how the popular Netflix dating show works is pretty well-known. But for the uninitiated, Love Is Blind follows a group of men and women as they seek romance in "pods."

Love is Blind contestants are not able to see each other as they go on these "pod dates," which are just like normal dates where they ask each other questions to learn about the other person, just without the visuals. The "Love is Blind experiment" as they refer to it on the show, is meant to test the theory that, well, love is truly blind.

During the Love is Blind casting process, casting directors do look for people who are genuinely trying to put the looks part of the equation to the side, and fall in love with someone's heart. There are some success stories from the show, so it may be worth a shot for singles looking for love to apply for the Netflix reality TV show.

Love Is Blind promo poster — Love Is Blind UK Is Hitting Fans Differently Compared To The US Version

The first step to applying to be on Love Is Blind is submitting an application via the Love Is Blind website (casting is currently closed at time of publication.) Those hoping to join Love is Blind will also need to prepare a 15-second video and include photos as part of this first step. You must also live in the city where they are currently casting. This is crucial because after leaving the pods, and going on their "honeymoon" vacation, they will have to move in with each other in the same city.

Creator and executive producer of Love Is Blind, Chris Coelen from Kinetic Content explains why this is such a critical part of the show. "It’s too difficult if you’re from Tampa and they’re from Portland, that just throws another wrench in. We wanted to give them a real shot at making their love and their marriage working."

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Love is Blind tends to select major metropolitan cities for their cast. The show has set up shop in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Charlotte, and its latest season is going to be set in Washington, D.C.

After the team has picked the city, it's the aim of the casting department to make their presence known. Donna Driscoll, the casting director, explains, "The big job for us is to make sure that everyone within a 50-mile radius is talking about the fact that ‘Love Is Blind’ is casting there."

Also, pay attention to what you post on your social media feeds, because casting directors will be taking a look - especially your Instagram. "You can tell a lot about a person through the content on their social media, like their personality, their goals, their interpersonal relationships" Donna said, according to ScreenRant.

Several of the former Love is Blind contestants, including controversial Jeramey Lutinski from Season 6, have claimed they were approached by the Love is Blind casting team via social media to discuss an opportunity with the show.

From there, the casting department takes on the huge task of interviewing around 2,000 people before narrowing that pool to around 300-400 folks. There are also some nitty-gritty details that applicants need to get to. They must fill out a 300 question compatibility questionnaire, and also complete a psych evaluation and background check.

Eventually, the team will find their top 30 candidates, paying extra attention to what potential connections could be made between the contestants. The casting directors, after all, are producers in their own way. They want to be able to see potential story-lines play out even as they are casting.

"The main thing is to follow the most authentic love stories at the end of the day.”

The casting director for Love Is Blind, Donna A. Driscoll, the head of casting at Kinetic Content. Donna is no stranger to the world of reality television casting. Previously she has worked on programs such as Married at First Sight, Little Women, and Spy Games. She has also worked on controversial programs The Apprentice and The Biggest Loser.

Donna got her start working in post-production, and then eventually found her way into the casting department from working as a production assistant for Mark Burnett.

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Donna is proud of Love is Blind's casting process and when interviewed by ScreenRant, elaborates on what she thinks makes it different. "What I think Love is Blind did differently is that it gave people what they’ve been wanting: an experiment to find love with substance... So everyone is looking for love and wants to be loved for who they are on the inside, and have the ability and freedom to truly be themselves, and I think that’s why Love is Blind is different."

Chris Coelen talked to Variety when the show first aired, about how he came up for the idea for the show. He looked at how superficial the dating world had become through the apps and websites, and he figured there had to be another way to go about finding love.

Finding love became more about choosing between photos, versus getting to know another human being.

"In today’s society we’ve got all these ways to find love through dating apps and technology. Those things sort of counterintuitively have made people feel disposable. They’ve made people feel like it’s all surface level."

"It does the opposite thing it was supposed to do."

"So we thought, what if we took everybody’s devices away, how could we get them to focus on connecting with other people?" Coelen said.

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Though Love is Blind has been accused of having "fake" couples, Donna Driscoll says that during the casting process their aim is to find people who are looking for true love. But how do they determine that? She elaborates on their criteria, saying, "Those indicators would be if they’ve done the work on themselves, healed from past relationships, truly understand what the meaning of love is, or have experienced what it is to love.”

While how much work one has actually done on themselves to heal may be difficult for a team of casting producers to determine, it certainly is good to know that they are taking that into consideration when completing their casting process.

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As viewers have seen in seasons past, love isn't actually that blind. Who can forget Abhishek "Shake" Chatterjee and his comments on weight while he was in the pods? (His fiancé, Deepti Vempati ended up leaving him at the altar.) Issues around the weight of the Love is Blind women have come up multiple times on the show (notably this never seems to be an issue for the women towards the men.)

In Season 6, contestant Clay noted that he preferred a "petite" woman. The word "petite" is often used on the show to be a code for "thin." Once Clay is engaged to AD, he tells her that even if she was pregnant, “I wouldn’t even let you get out of shape,” he continued, “I’d be like, AD, get in that mother----ing gym.”

The sizeist men of the show need not be concerned, because the show does not tend to cast body types outside the societal norm, or differently-abled people, or many people of color. In an opinion piece for MSNBC, writer Noor Noman stated, "among other things, the show’s premise and the types of contestants selected to participate in the experience reproduce harmful expressions of gender and sexuality. It explicitly promotes regressive forms of femininity, masculinity and heterosexuality, which, lest we forget, hurts everyone, including men."

Not to mention, the show is entirely made up of heterosexual couples. For a show that has now been on for four years, and has become a cultural juggernaut, it's strange that they have not explored queer romance. The show has also been criticized for its treatment of black women, with the relationship between AD and Clay reigniting those complaints. While it's admirable to have the goal of looking for those who "truly want love" it's clear that there's room for growth in their casting process.

Season 7 of Love is Blind premieres on Netflix, October 2 with a whole new cast of men and women, this time from Washington, D.C.