Emily Nussbaum Discusses Reality TV and the 'Love is Blind' Lawsuits: NPR

The hugely popular Netflix reality show Love is blind claims to be an experiment where participants are given the opportunity to fall in love – unseen. After “dating” in small groups through a wall, the men and women get engaged, meet in person, and then decide at the altar whether or not they want to commit to a real, legally binding marriage.

But some members have accused the show's production company of exploitation, and two former cast members have formed a group to connect reality show contestants with legal and mental health services.

“There are a lot of problems with this show,” says TV critic Emily Nussbaum Love is blind“The problem is the way the show is run, and honestly, the way almost all modern reality shows are run. Dating shows, I think specifically, have a lot of these dark qualities that viewers and fans don't know about.”

A regular writer for The New YorkerNussbaum wrote about the show in her May 2024 article: “Is Love is Blind a toxic workplace?“She describes the origins of the genre and its importance to our culture Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV.

Nussbaum says reality TV is a “really powerful modern genre” that has evolved over decades and affects everything from personal relationships to politics. She notes that it’s common for candidates to sign extremely aggressive nondisclosure agreements that prevent cast members from discussing the making of the shows.

“They can’t talk about what their producer did, if their producer lied to them, if their producer made them cry by asking them tons of personal questions based on their psychiatric evaluation forms, and then took that screaming out of context in the editing,” Nussbaum says. “They can’t talk about that or they might get sued.”

Nussbaum notes that there have been a series of lawsuits regarding Love is blind. A suitwho has been settled, accused the show's creators of underpaying, underfeeding and forcing alcohol on contestants. In another packa cast member accuses the show's producers of facilitating false imprisonment and sexual assault.

“All of these lawsuits are about a combination of things: the extremely oppressive contracts, … abuse and exploitation at the show and the handling of working conditions,” Nussbaum said. “And [the lawsuits] are not the only ones dealing with it Love is blind. [They are] addressing terrible working conditions and terrible legal conditions and… treating the people who go to these shows and who work on these shows as decent treatment.”

Interview highlights

On reality shows as “dirty documentaries”

When I call them 'dirty documentary' I mean they use documentary techniques and create formats that put pressure on the people in it. And the less people in it, the more they worry. [the shows] knowing what is going to happen, the more powerful and to some extent authentic their emotional responses are.

On how the earliest form of reality programming took place on radio

The earliest form of reality television that I'm talking about was actually before television. … There was an explosion of shows on the radio that also just featured regular people, and that caused a similar kind of moral outrage, where people were kind of shocked that regular people were on the air. And I'm talking about shows like Spontaneous microphonewhich was the first version of Hidden cameraAllen Funt's joke show, and Queen for a daywhere a bunch of ordinary women went ahead and told really harrowing stories about their personal suffering in their marriages, their poverty, abuse, illness, and all that. And so people were very upset about the fact that ordinary people were going on the air. There was no such thing as reality casting back then. I mean, this was just an opportunity for ordinary people to go on the radio and then later on TV and be on these shows, sometimes for awards. Like on Queen for a daythe person who won [was] based on a clap-o-meter, how other women rate them [on] who had the ugliest lives – their motive for going on the show was clearly that they could win these prizes.

On Love is blind contestant Renee Poche is hit with a lawsuit for talking about her bad experiences

She definitely wanted to get out as time went on. But like all reality shows, it's a collaboration between the cast and crew, and there are all kinds of psychological things that keep you moving forward even when you have doubts. I think the message she got essentially was that she had to keep going because… part of the show is that at the end you go to the altar and you can say no. So it just kept going. …

She felt threatened by [Carter, her fiancé on the show]. She only started filming scenes with him when she went there to be with him. But in the end they continued to the altar. I mean, the bigger problem is that Renee wasn't allowed to talk about what happened on the show. She wasn't really featured in the season. She and Carter were treated as side characters of sorts. Their story was cut very short at the last minute, and once she started talking about what Carter was like, how she'd felt threatened by him, how she'd felt pressured to continue on the show, she had with his criticism. court case.

No one is allowed to talk about the negative aspects of what they experience on the show because there is a threat of these lawsuits. Generally speaking, people have not been sued. That was Renee, and I think that was a message to everyone. If you experience something that is exploitative or abusive while doing a reality show, not only Love is blindbut if you voice your opinion on every show you run the risk of being sued.

On the private arbitration that keeps controversies out of the public eye

Emily Nussbaum TK

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Essentially, it keeps audiences, including fans of these shows, from understanding the actual circumstances in which they are made. And usually people don't get sued when they talk about their experiences on the show. But the one person who was recently chargedwho I wrote about in my article, was sued for $4 million. And I think that’s an important message. There are multiple reasons why people don’t speak out about this. And frankly, these terms in these contracts are absolutely standard for the industry. I think people who watch the show not only don’t know that, but they often just don’t have any sympathy for it. The prevailing feeling is, you decided to go through with it, so whatever happens, you should have expected it. I think that shows a lack of compassion, but I also think it shows a lack of understanding of exactly the circumstances that we’re dealing with here.

On how reality show contestants have little protection

One thing I discovered when I was working on this piece was about a category in the workplace that they fall into, in terms of Hollywood unions. They’re called “bona fide amateurs,” which is to say that they’re not scripted performers. That would be in SAG, like actresses, and they’re not unscripted performers that would be in SAG, like TV hosts and things like that. But they’re also not the subjects of documentaries, which are in a different category and have some control. They’re essentially game show contestants. They’re designated as a category that’s kind of an unofficial category and doesn’t have any protections or rights. And so what I wrote about in this piece was that the first glimpses of a movement to try to win protection, and also to try to educate the general population about how these shows are made and what these issues are, and to try to fix things improve, because I think some people at the center of this movement, it's not like they're saying you can't make an ethical reality show. They say the way reality shows are made right now isn't ethical, it really isn't, for both the cast and crew. They are non-union sets. People don't have many rights. And the conventions and history of the genre have a lot of ugly things about them.

Thea Chaloner and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan edited it for web.