The creator of Netflix’s Love Is Blind has responded to backlash over the lack of plus-size contestants in its current second series, saying producers don’t ‘steer or control’ who falls in love on screen.
Los Angeles-based Chris Coelen insisted the team doesn’t ‘stack the deck’ and try and encourage certain pairings after viewers noted two-plus size women who featured in the first episode did not have their storylines focused on.
Mr Coelen told the Los Angeles Times that it’s ‘interesting’ to see who gravitates to who and there are ‘some people that just present confidently or flirtatiously’.
‘It’s certainly not like we said, “Let’s stack the deck.” No, we had every kind of person that we could find come into this environment, and everybody had an equal opportunity,’ he said.
The creator of Netflix’s Love Is Blind has responded to backlash over the lack of plus-size contestants in its current second series, saying producers don’t ‘steer or control’ who falls in love on screen. Pictured: Contestant Chassidy Mickale, whose dating story wasn’t followed
Chris said the show doesn’t ‘control’ the contestants and everybody is given an ‘equal opportunity’. Pictured: Hope Antoniello, 31, was also featured in the first episode, but barely heard from after the initial introduction
Viewers claimed the Netflix show used curvier women to appear more diverse, but that women with conventional sizes were the ones the show focused on (Pictured: a grab from later in season 2 of the show)
‘We don’t steer or control any of it. We just set up the mechanism and help move them around, depending on who they want to spend time with.’
Femail has contacted Netflix for comment.
The dating show sees 30 singletons date a number of people from ‘pods’, where they cannot see each other.
The idea is that they fall in love with a voice and personality, rather than appearance.
At the end of the first week, a couple can choose to get engaged, at which point they come face-to-face for the first time.
Chassidy, from Chicago, was one of the plus sized women who featured on the first episode of the second series of Netflix’s Love is Blind – but her dating story wasn’t followed. Viewers accused the show of using Chassidy and another plus-sized female contestant to appear diverse
Viewers said they want to know what happened to Chassidy and Hope and that they were disappointed the show does not focus on them more, in spite of teasing them in the first minutes of the new series
They then spend four weeks together, at the end of which they decide if they want to get married.
Chassidy Mickale, a 33-year-old entrepreneur from Chicago, and Hope Antoniello, are two plus-size women who appeared in the first episode, sparking excitement from viewers who said it was refreshing to see ‘normal’ body types on screen.
Introducing herself, Chassidy said: ‘My physical insecurities have definitely affected my dating life. This experiment allows me to be judged for who I am as a person versus the physical.’
Meanwhile Hope said: ‘It doesn’t matter what I look like, how much I weight, color, ethnicity, anything you come from, it is who you are inside.
‘And I’m looking forward to what potentially could be discovered in these pods because I do indeed want to leave here with a husband.’
However for the remaining four episodes, the show focused on other couples and did not showcase any of Chassidy or Hope’s one-on-one dates in detail.
The same is true of Hasseb Husn, the only plus-size man on the show.
Furious Twitter users criticized the move, with one writing: ‘Love Is Blind really strolled out two plus size women in the premiere making us think we were going to have diversity…then we never saw them again.’
Another wrote: ‘I’m glad you saw them too, I thought maybe I hallucinated them at this point… damn I was excited.’
‘I was so excited for Cassidy and she literally walked in and back out I guess lol,’ another said.
‘I was so excited for the “normal” women and then they were gone,’ one wrote.
‘I was ready to see these men fall in love wit a big girl before seeing her…. den Netflix had other plans,’ one said.
Hasseb, pictured centre, was the only plus size man to be featured on the show, and was not among the couples who got engaged
Some also took issue with the fact that several of the female contestants that the show’s second series did focus on talked about losing a large amount of weight and struggling with body image.
Danielle Ruhl, 29, who is paired with Nick Thompson, 36, on the show, admitted she used to be fat as a child, which left her with crippling confidence issues.
And Deepti Vempati, 31, who is paired with veterinarian/DJ Abhishek ‘Shake’ Chatterjee also confessed she lost a lot of weight in the past.
Shake was also heavily criticised by viewers after he asked Deepti if he would be able to carry her on his shoulders in a bid to guess her weight.
This did not land well with viewers, who said the people were presented as less acceptable partners because they used to be fat.
‘And meanwhile we got multiple “I used to be fat, can you ever accept me?” storylines,’ one said.
Love Is Blind series two, part one, is available to stream on Netflix. Part two lands tomorrow.