Love Is Blind's host responds to accusation the reality series cuts Black women from the cast

"People gravitate to who they gravitate to," Nick Lachey says, after Love Is Blind alumni Lauren Speed-Hamilton called into question the cast's diversity

Love Is Blind's host responds to accusation the reality series cuts Black women from the cast
Love Is Blind contestants Cameron Hamilton and Lauren Speed-Hamilton with hosts Vanessa and Nick Lachey Photo: Jerod Harris

Love Is Blind host Nick Lachey has responded to comments made by a former contestant that the Netflix competition reality series consistently sidelines Black women. Love Is Blind is currently in the midst of its third season.

“People gravitate to who they gravitate to,” Lachey tells Entertainment Tonight of the series, where couples date and move towards engagement without meeting in person. “That’s not something that producers or anyone else can dictate or script or have dictated or scripted.

He continues: “I think that all you can do in terms of being in the show and being in the casting department is casting fairly and with great diversity. I think that they’ve done a good job of trying to do that. How it plays out, I can’t really answer to that part of it other than I know it’s not dictated or manipulated… who moves forward. It’s really, truly the connections they make blindly in the pods.”

Initial accusations came from Lauren Speed-Hamilton, a Love Is Blind alum who married fellow contestant Cameron Hamilton during the series’ season one finale in 2018. On October 24, Speed-Hamilton expressed her discontent via Twitter at the limited screen time Black women received in the third season.

“I don’t like how LIB be cutting all the black women,” Speed-Hamilton wrote. “How come they are always in the trailer but not the show…”

She continued in a subsequent tweet: “I know it’s slim pickings but about 85% of them couples be forced (just moving forward for entertainment purposes) anyway. Y’all could at least force some more sisters to move forward throughout the show.”

When a fellow Twitter user asked Speed-Hamilton how she thinks Love Is Blind’s producers choose what makes the final show, she responded: “It’s couples that get engaged that aren’t even shown sometimes. I think they only show what they deem most entertaining.”

Despite Speed-Hamilton’s concerns, Lachey actually asserts that Speed-Hamilton is a “perfect example” of Love Is Blind successfully uniting a couple that might not have connected otherwise.

“Lauren had never dated outside of her race in her life and met Cameron on the show, made a connection, and are happily married to this day,” Lachey shares. “It kind of lays the groundwork for everything else.”

 
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