SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for Season 11 of “Love Is Blind,” including the reunion, now streaming on Netflix.
Another season of “Love Is Blind” has wrapped up. The Season 11 reunion dropped on Netflix on Sunday, revealing that the one couple who did say “I do” on their wedding day, Sarah Williams and John Shannon, called it quits after he was caught texting with an escort.
However, the most dramatic part of the season centered on Rob Feeley and Michaella Giorgio, a couple whose relationship exploded in the weeks leading up to their wedding. The messiness began when the pair went out with his friends; after one of the belligerent boys got cut off by the bartender, Feeley then broke the fourth wall and yelled at production to “cut the cameras,” saying, “You’re cut off, I’m cut off.” He started yelling, “I’m not this phony ass Hollywood bullshit.”
“Love Is Blind” creator and CEO of Kinetic Content, Chris Coelen, breaks down the scene below and explains why he decided to keep it in the show.
“The participants are not under our control. Some shows are produced in what they call a bubble, where the participants are really in a specific location, and they’re with you 24 hours a day. That is not the case on this particular show. So when we are with them, which is not all the time, obviously we look out for them like we would for anyone, and we document their choices,” explains Coelen. “They’re adults, and they’re making their own choices, and we’re there to follow that. I think what you see pretty clearly in that scene is that the bar doesn’t want to serve Rob’s friend anymore; that’s a choice that the bar made, which I wholly agree with.”
He adds that there’s obviously a great deal of editing in the show, since you’re putting days of content into one episode, “but I think we’ve always made the commitment to show the essence of their journeys in an accurate way, and I think that certainly showed who Rob was in that moment in a very accurate way.”
After the episode aired, many viewers online feared for Giorgio’s safety, something she tells Variety was never a concern.
“There was never a moment during filming or production where I felt physically unsafe. I also feel very secure in the fact that if I did, I could always speak with production about it,” Giorgio says. “I’m not shy about the things that I need or standing up for myself, so my choices to leave with Rob were 100% mine, and there was never a moment where I felt like he would be physical with me.”
In fact, after the bar, the group stayed out until the middle of the night. So the next day, it was time for the St. Patrick’s Day pod squad mixer, which only made matters worse; Feeley had a “crash out” (his words), yelling that the whole experience was fake, claiming he was going to be edited poorly and that no one there really cared about him. It ultimately led Giorgio to call off their engagement.
“Our obligation is always just to support them in whatever they believe. Nobody is ever required to participate in the experience. They are welcome, and we see it happen every season, all the time — people drop out,” says Coelen. “Rob saying, ‘Oh, this is Hollywood bullshit,’ well, it’s his choice. The next day, Michaella was saying, ‘I don’t want to go to this group event.’ They don’t have to go. Nobody’s forcing them to go to the group event. It’s his choice to participate. Our approach is to try to provide the scaffolding for the experience, and then they navigate through that. That’s what’s fascinating to me and what makes every single season unique. Everyone navigates through that in their own particular way.”
Seasons 10 and 11 only featured one couple getting married, and, as noted, this season’s didn’t last. However, Giorgio says at the reunion that she still feels like the experiment worked because she did find love. Coelen agrees.
“It doesn’t worry me at all. The success of a particular season is not based on how many people end up getting married or staying married or getting engaged,” he says. “They get engaged ostensibly because they’re in love. That’s extraordinary. But that’s not where it stops. The true test of ‘Love Is Blind’ is with the love that they formed: Is that capable of surviving the real world?”
He’s also proud that the show has continued to avoid just showing “cookie-cutter” love stories like other dating reality shows do; this season highlighted real challenges and differences between the couples, including Williams and Shannon’s discussions around vaccines and women’s rights. The edit stays neutral, showing both opinions.
“What I’m really proud of is, we don’t take a position on any of that. Our job is to be a reflection of these particular people’s journeys, and in doing that, I think we’re a really interesting mirror into the society as a whole,” says Coelen. “Going back to Season 1, and moving forward, you can really feel some of the currents in our culture in terms of the things that matter to the participants in making the biggest choice in their life.”
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