Love Is Blind boss responds to Shake backlash
Chris Coelen said he's "not unhappy" Shake made it onto the show
The creator of Love is Blind has addressed the criticism around Abhishek 'Shake' Chatterjee's behaviour in season 2, revealing that he's "not unhappy" about casting him.
Shake became one of the most controversial contestants after placing a lot of emphasis on appearance and weight while searching for his future wife. He also made a number of hurtful remarks about his fiancée on the show Deepti Vempati behind her back.
When asked why Shake was cast, Chris Coelen told The Hollywood Reporter: "Listen, we vet people coming into the show. It's not an infallible process. I'm not unhappy that Shake made it onto the show. The intention is that you invite into the pods people who go through a pretty rigorous process to be chosen, and they have a stated intention of being serious about finding someone."
He added: "And I will tell you that I remember talking to Shake personally on the day of his reveal when he saw Deepti for the first time, and I remember saying hello to him and wishing him good luck in the future.
"I was incredibly moved and blown away by what I perceived to be his emotional sort of maturation and transformation in the pods, that he had seemingly discovered things about himself in the pods that were very profound in terms of why he felt the way he did and about who he was as a person, and I think he felt that way.
"And of course, the point of view of the show is not Love is blind. The point of the show is, actually, Is love blind? Can it be blind? And when Shake was there and saw Deepti for the first time, he was very much in the mindset that Love is blind, and this is the woman that I’m going to be with, and I have changed as a person.
"Of course, then he gets in the real world and that's what the show looks at. You start with love — can it survive the real world that we live in? And for him, obviously, it didn't, and I think that's a real story."
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Coelen said that while he is unhappy that Deepti didn't get the happy ending she wanted on the show, he does know that she felt she had "grown tremendously" through the experience.
"Our duty as producers is to tell the real story — that's it," he explained. "People have made comments like, 'Well, the producers would like this to happen.' Maybe we would, but we don't ever influence it — ever. We don't tell anybody what to say, how to feel, how to think.
"We set up the machinery and we just let it happen."
Love Is Blind seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream now on Netflix. Visit our Entertainment hub for more news and features, or find something to watch with our TV Guide.
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