SPOILER alert:This interview contains spoilers from the first four episodes of “Love Is Blind” Season 5, now streaming on Netflix.
The first quarter of “Love Is Blind” ended in quite the twist!
For the first time in the show’s history, the producers cast two singles — Lydia Velez Gonzalez and Uche Okoroha — completely unaware that they’d dated in the past.
“The fact that Lydia and Uche not only knew each other, but had a prior romantic relationship, was a complete surprise to me. I was totally blindsided,” show creator and Kinetic Company CEO Chris Coelen tells PvNew of the connection that occured despite the show’s vetting process. “It was a complete shock. To be honest, it was like, ‘What are we gonna do?’ Nobody had any idea.”
The duo realized they knew each other upon meeting in the pods, as she immediately recognized his name and voice. once producers realized what had happened, Coelen pulled them each into private conversations.
“We told each of them, separately, that we had no idea how this happened, and we were disappointed, but we felt the right choice was for them to leave the experiment,” he says. “Lydia and Uche were absolutely crushed. Separately, they each expressed a tremendous desire to stay and continue, speaking about their investment in the process. And to be honest, I felt bad for them, because this is an amazing experience to participate in.”
With that, he informed Lydia and Uche that if they were at all interested in exploring a relationship with each other, they should do so outside of the show.
“While they both said really positive things about the other, each one of them confirmed they had absolutely no interest in the other,” says Coelen. “We all agreed that, under the condition that they were not interested in each other, that they could stay if they did not immediately tell people about their history. And at that point, on Day One of the pods, we all felt that the information wasn’t relevant and we all agreed revealing it would have been destructive to everyone’s overall experience.”
once it became clear that “real feelings” were being developed — for Uche, it was with Aaliyah Cosby and for Lydia, with Milton Johnson — they were “free to discuss their past history with anyone they chose to,” he explains.
When Uche eventually told Aaliyah, she wasn’t only shocked because she had trusted him, but also because Lydia had become her closest friend. The news was seemingly too much for her to handle, as she chose to leave the show, blindsiding him when he was ready to propose.
Milton reacted differently when Lydia shared the news, taking a moment to himself to process it but eventually, proposing to Lydia. They became one of only three engagements this season, alongside Taylor Rue and Jared “JP” Pierce and Izzy Zapata and Stacy Snyder.
However, Coelen confirms that, just as in the past, “There were multiple other couples that got engaged that were not followed.”
He explains, “Each season, there are are lots of stories that we don’t tell, regardless of whether couples get engaged or not. Some of them even, we will follow for a little bit and not show their story on the show… It’s a little bit of a judgement call.”
The next batch of “Love Is Blind” Season 5 episodes will drop on Friday, Sept. 29.
