‘Love Is Blind’: How the Show Decides Which Cities to Visit
Love Is Blind has cast contestants from all over the country. But the show doesn’t pick its regions randomly. Series creator Chris Coelen once shared there was a method used to choose its location.
Why ‘Love Is Blind’ Creator Chris Coelen specifically targets big cities
Love Is Blind has tried to unite hopeless romantics in a different city each season. But from Atlanta, Georgia to Seattle, Washington, the series has shown to gravitate towards more densely populated areas. Series creator Chris Coelen once revealed that this was by design. The advantage behind casting in huge cities was being able to attract a diverse group of people who’ve never crossed paths before.
“We like to be in places that have a big enough regional population that we can cast a really wide net and try to get people who haven’t run into each other hanging out in the one bar in town, or they’ve all run into each other on a dating app,” Coelen said in a 2023 interview with Entertainment Weekly. “We want a big enough diversity of people, so we tend to go for bigger metropolitan areas just because you find more people there.”
Why did ‘Love Is Blind’ bring couples together from different states?
Love Is Blind hasn’t only recruited its cast from the same area. There have been a few instances where the series unites people who are from completely different states. Coelen asserted that sometimes this casting isn’t intentional.
“It’s kind of an accident,” Coelen said. “We always want the casting pool to be as big as possible, because we want to allow people to cast themselves, basically. You put people in the pod and then they figure it out. They figure out who they connect with or who they don’t, and they control their stories, their destinies.”
Coelen revealed that Love Is Blind season 4 was the only time the show purposefully cast people from different areas.
“That is the only time that has happened — we did have two couples who lived in different cities, which were Seattle and Portland, and we felt going into it that Portland and Seattle are close enough. I think it’s like a two-hour drive or something, which, if you’re like me and you live in Los Angeles, that’s like your next-door neighbor,” he said. “So it doesn’t seem too far if you found the love of your life to navigate it. We felt like that was a reasonable distance, sort of a fairly small regional casting vs. somebody who lived across the country.”
How ‘Love Is Blind’ is cast
Love Is Blind has featured a wide range of contestants. In a separate Entertainment Weekly interview, Coelen shared that he puts trust in a reliable casting team to recruit its stars. At the same time, Coelen and the team look for specific characteristics when choosing contestants. They needed to have a genuine desire to participate in the show that went beyond potential stardom.
“We have a lot of experience in doing these kind of shows,” Coelen said. “We have a great casting department and they reached out to people who they felt would be genuinely interested in this kind of commitment. I think that’s really key; we want people who aren’t just doing it for the attention. There’s certainly plenty of places for people who want to do stuff for the attention. We wanted to be really dealing with people who were genuinely interested in it.”
