‘Love Is Blind’ season 5 cast, including JP (left), Milton (center) and Uche (back right).Photo:Netflix
Netflix
Warning: This post contains spoilers from episodes 1-4 ofLove Is Blind season 5.
Only four episodes have been released inLoveIsBlind’sfifth season, but there’s already plenty of drama to unpack!
The biggest question fans likely have after watching the first batch of episodes is how exesLydia Velez GonzalezandUche Okorohamanaged to be cast on the series together.
With so much confusion and curiosity surrounding the bombshell news, PEOPLE spoke withLove Is Blind’s creator,Chris Coelen, and asked him all the burning questions – including what he knew, when production discovered the news, and how this happened in the first place.
Chris Coelen attends FYSEE Reali-Tea | Netflix at Raleigh Studios Hollywood on May 22, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.Charley Gallay/Getty
PEOPLE: First things first: how did Lydia and Uche manage to both get cast? Is there a vetting process to ensure exes aren’t cast on the same season?
CHRIS COELEN:Absolutely, yeah, 100 percent, we do a very thorough vetting process across all kinds of criteria. We really go to some great lengths, and to the best of our ability, we try to ensure that the pool of people in the pods don’t know each other. Obviously, we’re not infallible, and this one happened. However it happened, it happened, and we had to deal with the ramifications of it.
So you truly didn’t know that they were exes?
We had absolutely no idea. The intention is that we have a pool of people that don’t know each other, We have had a few instances in the past with people on the same side, like it’s two women who know each other a little bit, but we haven’t had people, to my knowledge, on the other side of the pod that knew each other, and we’ve never had, to my knowledge, people who have had a relationship in the past. It’s just mind-blowing that that was the case, and truly shocking on day one that that information was delivered to me.
Uche Okoroha on ‘Love Is Blind’ season 5.courtesy netflix
courtesy netflix
What exactly went down on the day production discovered Uche and Lydia previously dated?
I was sitting in the control room on day one of dating. I think we have 89 cameras in the pods and there’s lots of stuff happening. We have a big team of hundreds of crew members, and there’s always somebody listening to something. Whoever was listening in to Uche and Lydia’s conversation, as soon as that date was coming to an end, they came over and said, “These two people know each other. They had this relationship [previously].”
We immediately stopped them, pulled them aside, prevented them from going back into the mix in the pods, and brought them to separate interview rooms. We said to them first, “I don’t know how this happened, this is awful. I know you’ve planned to be here and you’ve gone through this whole process, and now you know each other. I don’t know how we can continue with you in this experiment, and I know that sucks.”
They’re like, “You mean you’re going to send us home?” We said, “I don’t know how you can continue,” and they’re like, “We want to continue.” Again, these are separate conversations, but basically, they’re saying the same thing: “We want to continue and we want to be here, and we’re really serious.” Each of them said, “We have no interest in dating the other one.” Both of them spoke very glowingly of the other. Both of them said, “It was kind of on-and-off but no interest moving forward. We really want to find somebody that’s committed to this.”
So we said, “If we were to allow you to continue being part of this experiment, knowing that you are really passionate about being here, we will allow you to continue under one condition.” We never police what anybody says, but in this case, it was the only time where we’ve said, “We would like if you would not reveal this to the others.”
Lydia Velez Gonzalez on ‘Love Is Blind’ season 5.courtesy netflix
Were there any other parts to that agreement?
It was A, you’re never going to interact in the pods again — because you say you have no interest. And B, we would like if you’d just focus your time and attention on the other people who you may connect with, and put the thought of one another to the side. And, don’t be telling people that you dated or that you know each other, ‘cause that’s not fair to you, it’s not fair to one another, and it’s not fair to the rest of the participants who might be developing connections with other people. They said, “That makes sense, you’re right, and we will do that.”
Given this, why were they able to disclose their relationship to Aaliyah and Milton in the pods?
Around day six or seven in the pods, we saw that they had really developed real feelings for another person and they were really, really getting deeply into those connections. At that point, a lot of people started zeroing in on who their people were, if they were lucky enough to have found them.
We went to Uche and Lydia each separately and we told them, “We don’t want you to walk out of here — whether you make the choice to get engaged, not get engaged, if you propose, whether it’s accepted, not accepted, however you walk out of here — if you’re interested in someone, we give you our full blessing to reveal that you’ve dated in the past, if you want to.
You don’t have to say that, and how you say that and to whom you say that is completely up to you. We said that same thing to both of them, and you see the results on the show.
Milton Johnson in ‘Love Is Blind’ season 5.courtesy netflix
Do you think Lydia and Uche secretly knew the other was participating on the show?
I honestly don’t know whether Lydia knew that Uche was going to be there, or Uche knew Lydia was going to be there, or they both knew about each other and conspired together. I have no idea. I know pretty much everything they said plays out on the show, but I don’t know the truth, and I’m not an investigator, so it’s not really worthwhile for me to go back in and forensically analyze what happened where.
All I know is it was really shocking, and before we found a solution to keep them on the show, it was disappointing and disheartening, and like, “Oh my God, this is awful,” because you take two people who you really like and you sort of have to take them out of the mix.
Knowing what you knew, was it hard watching Lydia develop such a tight bond with Aaliyah in the living quarters?
To be honest with you, from my own personal standpoint, I had no idea that that was happening. Again, there are 89 cameras in the pods, and when I’m in the control room, normally what I’m watching, if I’m watching something, I’m normally watching dates. It’s hard to keep track of everything.
When Aaliyah announced she wanted to leave the experiment, how did you react?
We always commit to the same process with regard to the men and the women, we always tell them from the very first moment that we will never, ever, ever communicate a message from one person to the other person. It’s their responsibility to tell each other how they feel or not. We will never say, “So-and-so’s feeling this way about you.” The only thing that we will ever say is that, “So-and-so wants to see you, are you interested now?”
In the case of Uche and Aaliyah, it was very clear that they had wanted to see each other in that moment where Uche was thinking he was going to propose, because they had talked about seeing each other. Then Aaliyah, very much to everyone’s surprise, decided to leave.
We set the date [for them], we weren’t going to come in and relay a message from Aaliyah. Frankly, I don’t know even if Aaliyah had her thoughts fully composed at that point. Aaliyah just said she wanted to leave, she wanted to go home, that was it.
Will this Uche and Lydia drama impact the way you approach casting in the future?
We continue to evolve our approach on this show in every aspect, on every season, to the entirety of the experiment in really incredibly positive ways. Certainly we’re going to continue to look at more ways that we can ensure that people don’t know each other. I’m sure it will happen again at some point in some way, but certainly we do our best to avoid that.
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Episodes 1-4 ofLove Is Blindseason 5 are currently streaming on Netflix. The next batch of episodes will drop on Friday, Sept. 29.
source: people.com
