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Chris Coelen recently reflected on one of the ‘Love Is Blind’ ideas that he felt the show was better off without.
For Love Is Blind, what happens outside of the pods can be just as entertaining, if not more so, than what happens inside. This includes the reunion specials, which have sometimes been platforms for relationship revelations and even more drama. However, there was one Love Is Blind special that series creator Chris Coelen did away with fairly early. And recently, he’s explained why.
Chris Coelen reveals what really happened to this ‘Love Is Blind’ project
Love Is Blind fans usually rely on reunion specials and social media posts to get updates on their favorite contestants’ love lives. But this wasn’t always the case. In the first couple of seasons, audiences could go beyond the reunion specials to catch up with couples on After the Altar. These functioned almost like the true epilogues of the show, keeping up with the day-to-day lives of former Love Is Blind participants. This experiment ended after season four. However, Coelen was recently asked if he might eventually bring the concept back.
“No. Not interested in doing that,” he simply told The Hollywood Reporter.
Coelen refuses to resurrect After the Altar for the same reason he abandoned the idea in the first place.
“It sounds fun to catch up, and that’s one of the reasons with the reunion now — it’s fun to catch up and see where some of your favorites have been,” Coelen said. “But when you get into an After the Altar structure, it becomes more like a docuseries. And docuseries, as many people know, are really driven by drama. And to go into an After the Altar with [season 7 contestants] Brett and Tiffany or Zach and Bliss or whoever, where’s the drama going to be? It doesn’t feel real; it feels like at that point you’re just making something that’s kind of for the sake of making it. It’s not an exciting idea for a show. It doesn’t really feel fulfilling to me as a producer. And I think, ultimately, even though people liked it to some extent, I just don’t think it’s that great.”
Chris Coelen reveals why there are certain moments that happen off screen in ‘Love Is Blind’
Not everything that happens in Love IS Blind is shown on screen. Throughout the series, there have been pivotal moments that have happened off-screen as well between couples. This season, for instance, Love Is Blind favorites Tyler and Alex had issues to resolve behind the scenes after Tyler dropped a bombshell revelation about his family. Last season, two Love Is Blind contestants,Jeramy and Laura, broke up due to a conversation Jeramy had with a past contestant.
Coelen addressed some of the criticism leveled at the show regarding these off-camera moments. In the same interview, he reminded fans that Love Is Blind can’t film all the time.
“That’s a lot of time and we don’t want to. We think it’s important that the participant have off-camera time as well as on-camera time,” Coelen said. “And for them to really get the full picture of who one another is before they get to the altar and make a decision. So we try to help them have all kinds of experiences. There’s no way for me to sit here and say I know what people talk about off camera. So what I would say is really the question is best posed to Tyler and Ashley and, what do they think and how do they feel? And that’s something you’ll see at the reunion. Tyler and Ashley don’t have an obligation to Joey from Instagram. They just don’t. And Joey from Instagram, I’m glad Joey has an opinion, but that doesn’t really make any difference to whether Tyler and Ashley have worked through something or not in a way that makes sense to them.”