Micah Loewinger: This is the On The Media midweek Podcast. I'm Micah Loewinger. Every now and then, we hear a segment on a show made by our colleagues here at WNYC that we like so much that we feel like we just have to share it with you. This one is from the New Yorker Radio Hour. Host David Remnick spoke to New Yorker writer, Emily Nussbaum, about a recent piece she reported about the lawsuits surrounding the reality TV show, Love Is Blind. Enjoy.

David Remnick: Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.

[MUSIC - Martin Bak & Jacob Diab: We're Alive]

TV clip: I feel optimistic that my person is here.

TV clip: I don't really give the nice guy a try, but I really want something real.

David Remnick: You've probably heard about the show Love Is Blind. Here's how it goes. A group of people enter tiny individual rooms and they're called pods on the show. Each person goes in alone, there's a comfy couch, no windows, and on the other side of the wall, in another pod sits someone else. Same situation, through the wall they compare hometowns, astrology signs, and their future goals. Then they do it all again with another person. After 10 days, some even fall in love and get engaged. That's the premise of Love Is Blind. It's one of Netflix's most-watched television shows of all time.

Emily Nussbaum: It's addictive and it's fascinating. There are people who go on the show who did get happily married. I talked to one of them for the piece, Alexa, who was in season 3. It's catnip to see people fall in love on screen, like people saying, I love you to one another. There are many contrived and fake things about the show as there are on many reality shows but there are authentic parts as well. I think it's that combination that's what makes reality television powerful to people. I wouldn't deny that, and that's true for me as well.

David Remnick: Staff writer Emily Nussbaum is a long-time watcher of reality TV, but lately she's taken a closer look at how this show is made. Its working conditions are now in question. There have been three separate lawsuits that allege lack of sleep, lack of food, 20-hour work days, and experiences of physical and emotional abuse. Along with those lawsuits, there's now a nascent labor movement in the field of reality television. Emily's piece for The New Yorker is called, Is "Love Is Blind" a Toxic Workplace? You are writing this week about an incredible controversy with one of the biggest shows in the history of reality television. Why are you drawn to reality television in the first place?

Emily Nussbaum: Well, I'm drawn to it for two reasons. One of them is that I'm actually I'm a long-term reality TV watcher. I was like an OG real-world person. I was a web watcher of Big Brother when it first came out. I don't watch it constantly. I'm not into every show. Love Is Blind, I actually did start watching during the pandemic, which is when a lot of people started watching it.

David Remnick: What's the appeal of reality TV to you?

Emily Nussbaum: The appeal of it is seeing regular people being emotional in ways that feel like a mirror. I think a lot of people feel multiple things about reality shows they watch. They feel sympathy, they feel contempt. They judge the people. It depends on the show. Some shows are competitive, shows like Survivor and some shows are dating shows. Some shows are more like soap operas. You can't lump them all together. It's a really big category. The one thing you have to say is whether people like reality or not, it is the most influential genre of pop culture right now. I feel like its influence spreads far beyond the actual shows.

David Remnick: [crosstalk] When you say influential, you mean just as a business proposition or what?

Emily Nussbaum: It's important as a business proposition in some really insidious ways because the reason it exists is because it's cheap. The other thing is it's culturally important in multiple ways, including the fact that it elected a president. It's important because people shape--

David Remnick: You're referring, of course, to Joe Biden's appearance on The Apprentice.

Emily Nussbaum: Yes, exactly. No, it's also influential in ways I think are often invisible to us that are linked to technology. The way that people present themselves in public, the way that people date, the way that people operate online is all part of a continuum of the public self that is influenced by, related to, sometimes directly linked to reality television.

David Remnick: Well, then tell us what Love Is Blind is all about, because it's a huge show for Netflix.

Emily Nussbaum: It's related to, and part of a huge universe of dating shows that go back to literally the 1940s when there was a show called Blind Date, where people were separated from the person they flirted with. It was hosted by Arlene Francis.

David Remnick: Wow.

Emily Nussbaum: It was very controversial at the time.

Peggy: Hello?

Danny: Hello Peggy. This is Danny. I was told if I called here, I'd get a date with an Angel.

Peggy: [chuckles] Somebody's been kidding you, Danny. There are no angels here.

Danny: Where are you talking from?

[laughter]

Peggy: Well, I don't have any horns either.

Emily Nussbaum: That was the origin of the dating game. This idea of flirting with somebody that you can't see is nothing new.

David Remnick: You consider The Dating Game or The Newlywed Game, which I watched as a little kid for all kinds of salacious reasons--

Emily Nussbaum: Absolutely.

David Remnick: Was it reality TV show?

Emily Nussbaum: This is a larger conversation, but the way I define reality television is it's basically documentary, cinema verite documentary, fancy schmancy stuff that's been cut with a commercial format like soap operas like game shows to speed it up and put pressure on people and get both fake and real responses from them. It suits a bunch of shows. I definitely think The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, which were designed to get people to confess to personal things and titillate people, who are watching, go into that category. Love Is Blind is a really intensified version of that because people actually do get married.

David Remnick: Emily, the piece that you just wrote for us is almost completely about labor practices, really. What is the labor issue on the set of Love Is Blind? Why has this all led to so many lawsuits and so much controversy and interest?

Emily Nussbaum: This is a piece about something new, which is the idea of a labor movement for reality cast members. Reality television has always been a really charged issue for labor. It's based on the idea economically that you don't have to pay actors or writers. That goes back to the earliest roots of reality television back when it was on radio. There have been attempts to get better conditions for crew, but really never for cast members because cast members are in a different position than pretty much anyone else in Hollywood.

They're not like subjects of documentaries who are in a different position and control their conditions but don't get paid, and they're not like members of SAG-AFTRA who can be either paid scripted actors or like newscasters or hosts of talk shows who are unionized. They're actually in a different category that, while I was reporting this piece I learned was referred to in a very old contract from live television as bonafide amateurs.

David Remnick: What does that mean?

Emily Nussbaum: Bonafide amateurs are essentially ordinary people, regular people, civilians who are non-professionals who go onto television and have no rights whatsoever. One of the things you do when you go on a reality show, and this is a long-term thing, it goes way back, is that you sign a huge, massive, frightening contract. The contract covers many things, but the two most significant things are, they can do anything they want with the footage that they get of you. They can cut it in any order, they could defame, you can't complain about that. You're giving them the right to do that, and you sign a massive NDA. You're also not allowed--

David Remnick: A non-disclosure agreement.

Emily Nussbaum: I'm sorry, a non-disclosure agreement.

David Remnick: Not only that, Emily, they also get paid a pittance which sounds like, they'd be doing better working at minimum wage almost and they're working this, what sounds like 15-hour days.

Emily Nussbaum: Even longer, 20-hour days in some cases, on Love Is Blind. It varies from show to show. Look, the main thing is when you sign up to appear on a reality show, they deliberately create pressured conditions for you because they're trying to have people not have sleep, be thrown off kilter. They're trying to get footage of people when they're under pressure. This is not only on Love Is Blind, this is conventional for a lot of shows. It's definitely conventional for dating shows. Yes, you agree to be paid nothing, you agree to be portrayed any way they want to, and you agree that you won't talk about it and that you're legally not allowed to talk about it.

The thing is, honestly, a lot of people, including people in Hollywood, even if this seems exploitative or potentially unacceptable, they're like, "People chose to do it. This is what they want to do. It's not a job. It's kind of just being a contestant like on a game show." For many years, people really didn't talk about the idea that there should be protections. I have to say, it's really clear to me. This is an unacceptable exploitative situation. Love Is Blind is a great lens to look at this through specifically because the people who created the show presented as something better than the ordinary run of reality TV.

David Remnick: That's interesting. Why did it take till 2024 for this to become a labor issue in any serious way?

Emily Nussbaum: Look, Hollywood is riddled with all sorts of complex labor issues, not all of which I'm an expert on. I think that one of the things that has affected this is that there were a series of labor uprisings across the country. There was a massive strike on the part of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, but there was also the Me Too movement, the Black Lives Matter movement. There's just been a lot of conversation about conditions on set and the treatment of people and trying to make Hollywood among other industries more humane.

This is lesser discussed. I think the main reason is people look down on anyone who goes on a reality show. It's partially because of how they're portrayed. It's partially because--

David Remnick: You don't see them as coal miners or school teachers. You see them as objects very often of-- It seems silly and that somehow you figure they're getting rich because they're in the tabloids all the time.

Emily Nussbaum: Actually, the other complicated thing is the economics of it. Historically, reality cast members never made anything, or if they made anything, it was a tiny amount. The bargain that they're supposed to cut more recently because of social media is they'll become famous and you can monetize your fame in other ways.

David Remnick: Right. You become a wealthy influencer in some way or another.

Emily Nussbaum: Right. There are definitely people who go on these shows, including Love Is Blind, where that's the intent. It is possible to make money on the other end, but that does not excuse the conditions. Even leaving the pay aside, the conditions in which they can do brutal things to you and you can't talk about them, those aren't acceptable no matter how much you're getting paid.

David Remnick: Let's talk about the "You can't talk about it" problem. All these people have signed non-disclosure agreements. You, as a journalist, in order to get a satisfying and verifiable story, have to talk to lots of people. How did you get around that? Insofar as you can talk about it.

Emily Nussbaum: Honestly, I just contacted a million different crew members starting with people who were lower on the totem pole-

David Remnick: And worked your way up.

Emily Nussbaum: -and worked my way up.

David Remnick: It's the standard way of reporting and it's brilliantly done. Now, the first lawsuit, and there are a number, the first lawsuit against Love Is Blind was filed in June 2022 by someone named Jeremy Hartwell, who was a cast member. He accused the production of unsafe and inhumane conditions, including sleep deprivation, food deprivation, and many other labor violations. Let's listen to a clip of him talking on a podcast.

Jeremy Hartwell: I did not sign up to be socially isolated in my hotel room for 24 hours straight without my hotel key. I did not sign up to not being able to use the bathroom for hours on end because to go to the bathroom, we had to have an escort. I did not sign up to be starved to lose 8 pounds in one week. I did not sign up to constantly ask for water and always be dehydrated and never get it. Nobody signs up for these things.

David Remnick: The interesting thing is that Jeremy initially thought-- Jeremy Hartwell, who was just speaking there, initially thought that what was happening to him was somehow an oversight, an accidental problem that they didn't know was occurring. He contacted one of the production companies, Kinetic Content is the name of it, to let them know. How did Kinetic Content respond?

Emily Nussbaum: [chuckles] They just said, "Go away." But they said it more rudely. This is completely normal for a reality show in a reality company. Cast members don't have the power to complain about things in this way. Jeremy ended up getting together with another cast member from his season, and Jeremy had left just a few days into the show by the way. He didn't get married. He didn't get engaged. He stayed for four to six days, something like that.

David Remnick: He had had it.

Emily Nussbaum: No. Actually, I think he did not leave of his own volition from what he told me.

David Remnick: Oh, they pushed him out?

Emily Nussbaum: There are 15 men and 15 women at the beginning of the show. By the time it goes into the part where they get married, it's a very small set of people. Some people get cut. Some people leave. A few people actually get engaged and don't get followed by cameras. The show is complicated. There's all sorts of things that happen.

David Remnick: Because they're considered boring or--

Emily Nussbaum: Sometimes, because they're considered boring. Sometimes, because they're not opening up or doing dramatic things in the way that the producers are pushing them to do. Sometimes because they didn't make a match. That's a part of the show that's legitimate. They don't have to follow everyone on the show. That's not the problem.

David Remnick: Love Is Blind does not follow the journalistic rules of The New York Times, The New Yorker, or anywhere else. They basically get their raw footage and they can do whatever the heck they want with it?

Emily Nussbaum: Yes. Again, that's not just Love Is Blind, that's all reality shows. In this particular case, yes, a bunch of people get cut and leave. Jeremy was one of them.

David Remnick: Now, there's another lawsuit. This time, it's filed by a Season 5 cast member named Tran Dang.

Emily Nussbaum: Yes. Tran Dang doesn't appear on Season 5. Tran Dang after she filmed Season 5 sued Kinetic Content because she said that she'd been sexually assaulted by the guy she got engaged to when they were on that vacation that they all take. She said that she'd complained about this to the producers and they ignored her and mind-gamed her and said, "This is a matter of miscommunication. You're not being forgiving enough."

When she finally insisted on leaving the show, she says they forced her to film a scene where they were basically feeding her lines. It's a really terrible story. The other thing that's in these contracts is that there's a clause that says that if you have complaints about the show, it goes into private arbitration. That means that the company and you have to work it out without the public ever knowing what happened. Every complaint about the show is supposed to go into private arbitration. Actually, Tran and her lawyer have gotten the right to have this be a public case. I think partially because it is about assault.

David Remnick: Tran Dang's fiance, we should say, Emily, denied these allegations but the fact that Tran Dang's suit will be played out in public is a big deal. It will allow the rest of us to actually understand the working conditions, sometimes really disturbing, that take place behind the scenes on reality TV shows.

David Remnick: Emily, there's a story, and this takes up a fair amount of space in your piece. There's a story of Renee Poche and Carter Wall. The producers were instructed to never leave the two of them alone together because of how volatile Carter Wall was. What happened there?

Emily Nussbaum: It didn't start like that. What started at the beginning was that they cast Carter Wall who--

David Remnick: Who's Carter Wall?

Emily Nussbaum: Carter Wall who spoke to me. Carter Wall was a guy who was a heavy drinker. He didn't have a job. He had an unstable life. They reached out to him on Facebook, the way they reached out to many people on social media, and said, "Do you want to try out for this show?" One of the things that they have consistently told people on the show is, "We don't cast people who have red flags. We are casting people who could be somebody you'd want to marry."

David Remnick: What are they looking for when they scan Facebook?

Emily Nussbaum: Obviously, it's a reality show. They're casting for lively, vibrant characters who-- Sometimes, I think they cast for people who are unstable in a way.

David Remnick: Deliberately?

Emily Nussbaum: Yes. They're looking for people who pop on television. That can mean a lot of different things. I think one of the really hazardous things for people who go on shows is that sometimes people are mentally unstable in a way that makes them just huge drama on TV, but it's very bad for the people because being on camera and becoming globally famous while losing it on camera--

David Remnick: And morally dubious.

Emily Nussbaum: Yes, I would say that's morally dubious. In Carter's case, he was cast on the show. Renee was cast on the show, and they bonded in the pods and things seemed to be going pretty well for them. They got engaged, which is what happens on the show. When they were back in Houston, that's when things got really bad. Basically, the story that I trace in this piece is from the perspective, a lot of it of crew members on the show who watched as Carter became increasingly resentful and Renee pulled away and he was getting increasingly angry. He was yelling at her and calling her names. It's a complicated story.

David Remnick: There's a gun involved, too.

Emily Nussbaum: Renee has a gun that she keeps in her glove compartment. She's said on a podcast that she gave that she was told by production not to let Carter get near it. They were clearly concerned about his temper and about the idea that he was dangerous. The entire situation seems to me to have been hazardous, but it kept rolling forward anyway. What you have to understand about this, this didn't all happen at once.

This happened over the course of the show as everybody was filming it. As it became more and more apparent that Carter seemed like a threatening, insulting figure, as Renee clearly started getting doubts about the whole thing and going through it, they nonetheless kept filming. They filmed all the way until they filmed a scene where they went down the aisle and Renee walked away and said no. This happens a lot on the show. Not everyone gets married.

David Remnick: Did this appear on the air?

Emily Nussbaum: No. What happened is that they filmed the entire thing, they did the initial edit, and then they didn't put it on the air. I explored various different reasons why they--

David Remnick: Who's suing whom here?

Emily Nussbaum: The lawsuit is because after they didn't show it on Season 5, which Renee didn't find out about until shortly before the season run. She started speaking out on podcasts.

Renee Poche: They just called me and it was really out of nowhere. Just to let me know that my storyline wasn't going to be a main focus for the season and that they didn't want me to relive everything I had gone through. I was really confused. I thought that it was just going to be-- Still, everything was shown, but just not as deep as what really happened which I wouldn't have been surprised if that was the case since so much bad stuff happened. I knew a lot of things just wouldn't even be appropriate for Netflix.

Emily Nussbaum: What she's talked about in various podcasts is that she was frustrated that they didn't show it. She'd gone through the whole thing and she wanted the story to be told. Also, she's part of a group of people who is friendly with Tran Dang. They were all friends in the pods. Tran Dang's lawsuit was going through. This is the thing, is a complicated story. The reason I think they didn't run her story is actually because somebody from Carter's family and friends called the production and said that he might commit suicide if they aired it. I think that that's the reason.

David Remnick: I have to say if I'm an executive at Netflix and I'm presiding over this ultimately, am I playing with fire? I'm searching social media for people who are potentially unstable. I'm throwing them together in this experiment in intimacy. Aren't bad things bound to happen?

Emily Nussbaum: I think they are. I also have to say, I think dating shows are particularly prone to stuff like this. Look, the story of Carter and Renee are both stories that have to do with abuse, emotional abuse, and some really over-the-top intense subject matter. The ordinary experience of people who go on these shows is also sometimes damaging and dangerous because sometimes they take people who are vulnerable and unstable, they put them under tremendous pressure, and they deal with their deepest feelings.

They are rejected on the air or they get humiliated on the air. The reason it's useful to talk about Renee's lawsuit specifically is because what happened to her on the show is in some ways ordinary. She filmed the entire show. The exceptional thing is that they didn't show it on the air. She's being sued for talking about her experience.

David Remnick: Breaking her NDA.

Emily Nussbaum: She broke her NDA and generally they haven't sued people for this, but they are suing her. The message seems to be, "You can't tell people the secrets of the show."

David Remnick: What is the current status of those lawsuits?

Emily Nussbaum: Unfortunately, for Renee, that lawsuit right now had a decision that was not in their favor that said it had to go into private arbitration. Whereas the other lawsuit, Tran Dang's lawsuit, is actually going to be a public case. People will be able to see what happened there.

David Remnick: Now enter onto the scene now, Bethenny Frankel, a former Real Housewife star, and she's now an advocate for reality stars to come together and unionize.

Bethenny Frankel: Why isn't reality TV on strike? I got paid $7,250 for my first season of reality TV, and people are still watching those episodes. We've always been the losers, the I'm up here, you're down here to the actresses and actors. During the last writer strike, we're providing all the entertainment. That's when really the gold rush of reality TV started.

David Remnick: How effective has she been?

Emily Nussbaum: This is with all due respect to Bethenny, but what Bethenny did was, I believe it was last summer, she put up an Instagram post saying, "This is a union." That's not an actual attempt to organize reality stars. It was an important statement. [crosstalk] I think it is meaningful and symbolic.

David Remnick: Is there a union that stepped in?

Emily Nussbaum: No. There isn't a union. There are so many different reasons for this. I think the issue of whether reality stars could possibly unionize is infinitely complex.

David Remnick: Because they come and go. They don't--

Emily Nussbaum: It depends on the show. The Real Housewives are literally stars of that show. [crosstalk]

David Remnick: They have been recurring.

Emily Nussbaum: They appear season after season. I actually think, and frankly, there are some shows including The Real Housewives that are very contrived, where people behave deliberately to act like themselves. They're pretty much actresses. They have a lot in common.

David Remnick: They act out.

Emily Nussbaum: Right. Their job is to perform their dramas in a way that's a collaboration with the production. They barely get paid for this, but they are very much like actors. They're doing a faker show. Whereas there are other shows like Love Is Blind where I feel like the stuff that people are doing, some of it's contrived, but certainly what happens in the pods is authentic. It's a different show. They'd be organized in different ways. They have different legal statuses. This is just the glimmerings of the beginning of this. Of course, there are ways other than unionization to try to get rights for people.

The thing that there's no doubt to me is that the people who are on reality shows are a vulnerable class of people who are mistreated by the industry in ways that are made invisible to people, including, and importantly to fans who love the shows. They genuinely don't know, I think, how these shows are made, and I think it's important that people have rights, and I also think it's important that people educate themselves about what's happening on the shows.

[music]

David Remnick: Emily Nussbaum's new piece in The New Yorker is called Is "Love Is Blind" a Toxic Workplace?. You can read it at newyorker.com. She's also got a new book coming out next month about the history of reality television, and it's called Cue the Sun. I'm David Remnick, thanks for joining us. See you next time.

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