Dating on the Spectrum

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From the New York Times,

I'm Rachel Abrams,

and this is the Daily on Sunday.

Today,

the reality show Love on the Spectrum,

which follows artistic adults as they search for love,

has just released its fourth season.

The show has largely attracted praise for its realistic,

its sensitive portrayals of neurodiverse people,

and it's become one of the most popular

and unlikely hits on Netflix.

Today,

Ann Appeal, a contributing writer for the Times,

talked with the creator and the cast of Love on the Spectrum,

about the show's origin story,

the nuanced criticism,

and why it has resonated with so many people.

It's Sunday, April 19.

Music

Ann Appeal, welcome to the Daily.

Thank you so much for having me.

You are a culture writer,

but you are also a reality TV expert,

which I like to think of myself as a reality TV expert

just based on how much I watch.

But you have actually spent a lot of time reporting

and writing extensively about reality TV.

So just to start the conversation,

I wonder if you could,

for people who have not seen the show,

tell us a brief overview of the premise of Love on the Spectrum.

So Love on the Spectrum follows mostly young people

who are on the autism spectrum,

while they learn to date often for the first time,

the show will set them up,

they'll match make them,

sometimes they'll follow them to speed dating events

or things like that.

It's incredibly popular,

it's one of the biggest shows on Netflix,

and it's so unique to have a show

that is actually socially responsible,

but is also scratching the edge

that people have to watch reality dating series.

This show is noteworthy for approximately one million reasons,

but not the least of which is that reality TV

is a genre of television

that is arguably the most exploitative.

The premise of so many shows

is that people debase themselves for your amusement,

and this show has the potential to be

an absolute train wreck of a show, right?

Like this is walking such an ethical tightrope.

And what you're saying is that not only does it succeed

in walking that tightrope,

but it is a commercial success

because it is heartwarming,

because it makes people feel good.

With other dating series,

I think that even if you were say,

oh, I'm watching for the romance,

I want people to get together.

The moments that are really sticky

are often the most dramatic,

and as you said, exploitative.

And what people say is,

oh, the people who go on those shows signed up for it.

So whatever happens to them, they deserve it.

This, I think people genuinely want the best

for the people on the show,

and I think that the people who are making the show

want the best for the people who are on the show.

And that's not always the case

when you're producing reality television.

Okay, so let's talk about how the show came to exist.

What is its origin story, if you will?

So love and the spectrum wouldn't exist at all

if it weren't for one person.

His story, his skills,

his very unusual path to making love on the spectrum

are as unlikely as the show itself

becoming the hit that it is.

Hi, Kean.

Hi.

How's it going?

Good, how are you?

Doing well, thank you.

So his name is Kiano Cleary.

He's an Australian documentarian

and he got his start in the industry

working on huge blockbuster films.

My first job in film was,

or the Moby Dick one,

or do you want me to talk about the cat training one?

One of his first jobs was as an assistant cat wrangler

working on the Babes sequel.

We had, I think eight or nine of us working

in the cat department and we had 110 cats.

So it was a lot to do.

Not just a cat wrangler, an assistant cat wrangler.

No, you got to work your way up in the cat wrangling business.

I mean, I just kept then getting roles on big films

as a production runner or a director's assistant.

Oh, quite sort of, I guess, the word is manual, right?

Non-creative roles on big films.

He worked on the Matrix, he worked on Ceyriana.

He was on Notting Hill.

At that point, I thought I wanted to make films,

feature films, you know.

Kean told me that at that point in his life,

he was really figuring out what he wanted to do in the industry,

which relied a lot upon what he would actually be good at.

I'm actually a very self-critical person.

And if you want to make a feature, you need to write a script.

Whenever I try and start it, I would just hate myself

so much I had to stop, which is kind of sad,

but that's the kind of truth of it.

And he didn't really figure that out until he got this

unexpected role while working on

Buzz Lerman's film, Australia.

I was Buzz Lerman's driver.

So again, I'm not doing anything creative,

but I'm sort of at the hub of things.

He had a lot of downtime while working on the movie

and he wound up picking up a spare video camera

and he just started shooting behind the scenes footage,

which Buzz saw and loved.

Buzz used to say to me, it's like you're invisible,

which I thought was actually a really nice thing

and he would meant it as a compliment that,

I was able to get really close in on him working

with the actors on these sets, with a camera, filming,

and kind of people wouldn't really even notice me.

And so I was able to capture this really great intimate footage.

So they wound up cutting it together

and editor on the film helped him.

And then Key and use that footage

to make a big career pivot into reality television.

So he was working on shows like Dancing with the Stars,

Australia, he was on Merit at first sight, Australia.

And then there was one show that wound up

being incredibly important in his career path.

Farmer wants a wife.

So I was working on, I don't know what season it was,

a far more whatsoever.

And we had our farmer and we had three ladies who liked him.

So one of the women who was competing for the love of a farmer

started acting strangely.

And Key and was producing her.

And he started to see that she wasn't making any sense.

I actually think she was actually becoming psychotic.

Like actually she was speaking and not being nonsensical.

Yes.

So as soon as that became clear,

it was, you know, let's work this out.

Let's look after her mental health.

Obviously we weren't filming at that point with her.

And someone working in post production was watching all the footage,

saw how Key and was dealing with her

and that he had immediately recognized that she shouldn't be filming.

So and then got her out of there.

She saw the way I was talking to this young lady.

As you know, it seemed like she wasn't doing so great.

And this producer recommended Key and to direct this project

that offered unprecedented access into a locked psychiatric ward.

I'm sorry, what?

I know.

Liverpool is one of the biggest and busiest hospitals

in the country.

I'm exhausted.

It's called Changing Minds.

It was produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Over the next three nights, this series will take us inside.

Previously, I directed like segment or, you know,

a particular cast member for a show.

But this was like one docuseries, three parts directing the whole thing.

So this was my first kind of real directing assignment in a sense.

So it was a big deal for me.

When Key and gets into this role, he's never directed anything before,

like as a lead director.

And it's also something with a huge social responsibility.

There were people in psychosis.

There were people with extreme depression.

I mean, you know, I was interviewing someone several hours after they've attempted to take their own life

and in the emergency department.

I mean, it was quite actually some really quite heavy stuff, you know.

Okay.

I mean, I think it's probably pretty obvious.

But just to state the obvious,

working on reality television does not, to me, seem like something that prepares you

to just start filming in a psychiatric ward.

I don't think anything could prepare you to start filming in a psychiatric ward.

But it uniquely worked with Key and Skillset because he's the kind of field producer

who is not trying to be directive, which is very unusual in field producing.

What do you mean by that?

When I was reporting, enter the villa,

somebody used to be a field producer said, we are the manipulators.

Those are the people who are talking to the cast members.

They're trying to get information from them.

They're encouraging them to act.

And Keyin is being invisible, you know.

He's using his superpower.

The issue of consent though, I can imagine that that was probably one of the biggest thorneist issues

in everything he had to navigate on that show.

How did he approach that?

It was handled very sensitively.

You would often see people come into the ward really unwell

and then, hopefully, leaving at the end,

going back to their families, being well again.

And so the consent process involved people, double triple consenting.

He would try and get consent before,

but often people were in psychosis.

He would talk to their family members if they had them.

And then he would speak with them after they were out of psychosis.

But they didn't get to see the footage.

So they had to trust Keyin to put themselves out there

when they're like really, really unwell to the point where they had been hospital.

And so we lost a lot of stories.

People, you know, like actually, I don't want you using that footage of me

telling you I was Vladimir Putin or that I was Jesus Christ.

And what was the argument for why they should allow themselves to be exposed in this way?

Because people don't understand if they don't see.

Keyin believed that it was really important for the public to see people

who society might believe don't have a future.

But see them when they do get treatment

and when they are properly cared for, that they can get better.

That sounds like something that would have made quite an impression

on a person in his position.

But how does he get from there to love on the spectrum?

Yeah, so there was one more step in between changing minds and love on the spectrum.

How many jobs would you say you've applied for?

Oh, we're in the hundreds at this point.

He executive produced this show called Employable Me

with the same team who did changing minds.

It was a documentary series about people with disabilities

who were looking for meaningful employment.

I'm Rowan. I'm 21 and I have autism.

Tell me why do you want to job, Rowan?

I want to job with people.

And many of the people who Keyin wound up working with Unemployable Me

had autism spectrum disorder.

The series we're making was about people looking for a job.

But we did hear very often about people's wanton desire to find love.

And there wasn't any support in that area.

And he just loved how honest they were, how unfiltered they could be,

how they might say things that so many of us are thinking or feeling.

I'd always wanted to make a dating show that felt really real

and kind of just truthful and honest

and didn't necessarily have all the bells and whistles of a competition.

And so Keyin wanted to make an honest unfiltered dating show.

And so that was, I guess the kernel of the idea was,

hey, there's this population of people who are wanting love.

Maybe this would make for a great doc series,

telling these stories and kind of helping people find each other.

And so they pitched it to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

and they Greenlit it.

So now that it's Greenlit, the big question is,

how does Keyin make this show?

I have the exact same question,

and we will talk about that after the break.

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Okay, so Anna, after Key and gets the green light,

he obviously has to figure out how to actually go make the show.

Tell us about the process.

So he started casting the same way that he was casting Employable Me.

We started to put the word out with all the kind of various scripts and orcs that we had already worked with.

And there was definitely hesitation.

But unlike Employable Me, which had a lot of buy-in from the beginning,

there was some skepticism because it's a reality dating series.

I guess it's understandable in that some shows out there that are in the reality dating space,

necessarily the most positive or people who are part of those shows can sometimes come across badly.

And I guess there was skepticism of how we were going to tell the stories.

They had the same questions that anybody would have, which is, is this going to be exploitative?

Is this going to be for neurotypical people to gok at people with autism?

But Key and explain to them, no, we want this to be for a diverse audience.

We want to show the diversity of the autism spectrum.

We want this to be an empathic, supportive, good-hearted show.

And then after he got the buy-in from the autism groups,

of course, he had to get the buy-in from the participants' families.

And basically, it just came down to people trusted Key and to be the one to tell the story.

Which strikes me as really kind of a feat, because just to put it bluntly,

how on earth does this man, who has worked on shows like Dancing with the Stars,

convinced people that he is going to make what the only reality dating show that doesn't actually exploit people?

Well, what's interesting is that I think when you talk to Key and you just see how gentle he is,

and how much he acknowledges that he doesn't know everything,

which I think is how they kind of sell people to get on these shows.

But he talks about how he wants to go on the journey with these people,

and he wants to tell their individual stories.

And those stories are about finding love, but it's also about familial love,

it's also about putting yourself out there and trying new things,

and the joy of kind of working through discomfort and learning something new.

He did basically the classic journalistic thing of convincing somebody earnestly

that you really want to tell their story, you are not trying to use them,

or exploit them, or humiliate them.

Yeah.

Is there an example that really illustrates this that you could give us?

So, after two seasons in Australia, Netflix,

which had aired the Australian version on the platform,

commissioned an American version.

And so, one of the first people who Key and considered casting was Abby,

who became one of the most beloved cast members on the show,

and who I actually traveled to LA to speak with in February.

So, I'm recording, is that all right?

Key and first started talking to Abby back in 2020,

after seeing her perform an arts event for people with autism.

Do you remember that you were talking, and he was on Zoom with another lady?

We were sitting in the desk.

What are we, he was asking if you wanted to date and have a boyfriend.

And he started talking to her mom about whether she wanted Abby to go on the show,

because her mom had to consent for Abby.

Abby can't advocate for these kinds of things really.

I mean, she can tell me yes to no one, but the nuances or the deeper meanings

are sometimes hard for her to process or express.

She had already seen Love in the Spectrum Australia.

She thought it was a really positive, wonderful show.

I was concerned and I said to Key on, I love your show,

but I don't think Abby's right for it.

But Abby has language processing issues,

and she was like, she's not going to be verbal in the same way

that the really wonderful Love in the Spectrum Australia cast members had.

Key on said to me, we want more diversity of the spectrum, of the spectrum.

And he said, we want to tell her story.

And that's when I felt safe enough for her to jump in.

And so Key and said, no, we want to show Abby, an Abby story.

And so the combination of Abby potentially finding love

and people understanding her daughter,

which is really all she wanted.

And the trusting key, and just made her say yes.

So what happened after she said yes, what was the next step?

So the next step was Key and going to Los Angeles to film with Abby and Christine.

And the first day just didn't go well.

Abby, can I tell the story about being in your bedroom when we were shooting?

Or do you want to tell it?

We can tell it together.

So Abby was sitting there.

It's a sit-down interview.

They only do one with each cast member every season.

First day of shooting.

First day of shooting.

I was in my bedroom in my room, and I was completely zoned out because...

And Abby just didn't want to do it.

She was yawning.

She was asking if she could leave, which of course she was free to.

They've been shooting for 60 seconds.

And obviously I wasn't in the room, but I could hear her.

And I started to cry in the other room.

And I thought, what have I done for her to put her in a situation where she can't verbalize?

Christine is in the other room listening, crying, thinking,

what did I get my daughter into?

Why did I put her into a situation where she's not able to communicate?

And so she thought that this was over.

A week later they called back and said, we want to come back.

And still, Abby just at home walking around doing her thing,

which is going to follow her.

And I was kind of like, seriously?

But the next day, Keen came back, and he was like,

Abby just go do whatever you would normally be doing.

So he and then this cinematographer just hung back,

and they just observed.

Abby was her true self.

Abby was doing impressions of Bruce the shark from Finding Nemo,

because he has an Australian accent.

Like Keen.

And Keen said, are you making fun of me in my accent?

And she said, yes.

And what's interesting is not just that it worked for the show,

but that Abby and Christine learned that Abby is much better at talking

and communicating when she's in movement.

Was that the first time you learned that?

Was that something you knew from before?

And then you just...

No, that's the first time I knew.

Oh, wow.

It really was.

It was one of those moments, a cathartic moment of like,

how did I, her primary caregiver, miss that?

Yeah.

And the show taught me that.

I didn't think it would be.

So clearly, it sounds like Keen is helping some of these people

who have talked to you feel seen.

He's making them feel comfortable.

He's reassuring their families.

But I'm sure there's also this question of like,

what happens in post-production?

Like, what happens to the footage?

And what happens if there is material that, for example,

the participants might feel uncomfortable having shown on television?

Like, they don't have final cut.

They can't demand that stuff be excised.

So how is that handled?

Well, the same way that people in changing minds

didn't get to see the footage before it aired.

Nobody on the show gets to see the show before it premieres

on Netflix.

And so it's a process that starts wall,

they're actually filming when Keen's checking in,

when Keen's making sure they're comfortable,

when Keen's making sure that they're okay.

Even before they get there, they're making sure

that any accommodations that people need are happening.

So, for example,

At the St. Pete Pier, Madison is waiting for her date to arrive.

A cast member named Madison went out on her first date

with someone named Brandon.

I'm Madison. Nice to meet you.

And Brandon is sensitive to noise,

so they'd cleared out half the restaurant,

so nothing would trigger him.

I'm getting distracted because of his few noises in the background.

Brandon, it's a bit noisy than we expected.

Let us know if you want to move outside, okay?

Okay.

But then there was a baby crying on the other side of the restaurant

so far away,

and he just folded forward onto the table.

He was so uncomfortable.

He just couldn't continue the conversation with Madison.

Just afraid of the noise may probably grow

and then something going to expect it might happen

and I would scare.

Keen kept checking in with him and asking,

do you want a break? Do you want to stop?

They're always asking them if they want to stop filming.

And eventually he did.

And it's something that I've heard from neurotypical viewers,

oh my gosh, like that made me so uncomfortable

that was exploitative to show him in that moment.

But it was a subject of a big debate among the creative team.

They were deciding, should we show this moment?

Is it too much?

Is it putting Brandon into position where we're showing him

like not in a good light?

And then they realized, okay, people might understand

that people with autism have sensitivity to sound,

but you don't really get what that means.

If you see it, then you understand it.

And so they talked to Brandon and his mother.

They described the scene to him.

Obviously he had experienced it.

And they said, yeah, use it.

And how did they feel after watching it?

Did you talk to them about that?

We emailed.

And Brandon and his mother, when they saw the footage,

were really happy with it.

They were really proud of Brandon.

He'd gone through something uncomfortable and difficult,

and he'd continued the date.

And I think it's important to note that Brandon felt discomfort

not from watching himself.

He felt discomfort in the moment from the noise,

but the footage itself was not distressing him.

That made him happy.

To have somebody see him and what this was like for him.

Yeah.

So did everybody that you talk to feel this positive

about their experience?

I talked to almost every cast member

who has been on Love in the Spectrum,

and everyone said that they're glad that they did the show.

And Kean told me that no one has ever told him

that they regretted being on it.

But there was one person I spoke with

who had a more nuanced view of her time on the show.

Okay, so who was she?

Thank you so much for getting on and talking with me.

I'm really excited that you're going to be part of this.

Yeah, me too.

Kaelen Partlow was a cast member on season one

of the American version.

She does say that she is happy that she went on it.

She now has a following.

She is an autism therapist.

She wrote a book called Life on the Bridge

that just came out in March.

Despite having a wonderful career,

my personal life is very empty.

But she talked about the fact that the thing that happens

for other people on the show, some other people,

which is finding these romantic connections

or even just social connections did not happen for her.

I don't know that Love on the Spectrum is really achieving

all that it looks like it is achieving.

Which is not to say that it's not doing good

or that it's not a net positive

because it certainly is.

However, I just don't know that it's resulting

in this wonderful interconnected life

in the way that people may think that it does.

She also talked about what makes a

quote-unquote good cast member.

It's tricky because with casting,

I think they're looking for people who are also kind of bubbly

and exuberant to a certain degree.

She thinks that people who are less predictable,

more charismatic, honestly,

the kinds of people who make good reality TV,

are also the kinds of people who are thriving

on Love on the Spectrum.

I don't know.

One time I had talked about myself not making

great reality television because while my story may be unique,

it's not like viewers are sitting on the edge

of their seats wondering,

oh my god, is she going to put her hands down his pants?

No one is wondering that.

My behavior was, I think, maybe too predictable

to make good entertaining television.

So in her mind, who's getting excluded from that?

They're looking for people who have the ability

to communicate decently well on camera.

So you're already...

Kaelin noted that people who are non-speaking

or who use devices to communicate have not been featured

on the show.

And Love on the Spectrum does say that they're trying to increase casting

to tell the breadth of stories that there are about autism

because there are countless ones.

But key in acknowledges, you know,

there are people who require 24-hour care who have autism.

Not everybody is able to date

and not everybody wants to date.

People who prefer to be alone

and prefer not to go out or to meet new people.

And I think that's a large portion of the autism spectrum

are not going to be good candidates for this.

So they're just not going to be able to tell every kind of story.

Right.

Because autism is a huge spectrum.

Like, it would make sense that not everybody who's autistic

would be good for a reality show.

Just like the same way that not everybody in the general public

would be good for a reality show.

But what she's saying it sounds like is that

therefore for a show about dating with autism,

it could only be so representative.

I think that that's true.

And I think that even as the show's creators say that they are trying

to increase the kind of stories that they're telling,

there is a limit to that.

All of that makes sense when you remind yourself

that this is at the end of the day commercial venture.

Right. It has to have an audience.

It has to get, you know, a distributor.

It has to have somebody pay for it.

And I wonder if what she's basically saying is that

that requires inherently casting that flattens the human experience.

You're only casting for a certain type of person.

He clearly wants this to be an uplifting show.

Right.

He wants the stories to make you feel good.

And so that premise is going to lead you to a certain type of people

that does not necessarily make the universe of people

as three-dimensional as we know that human beings are.

Well, no reality show is a person that is not the only person

that does not show as a person in their full humanity as a human being.

But I do think that this show does not shy away

from the really difficult moments.

But yeah, at the end of the day,

this is a show that has a comedic tone.

As you said, it is an uplifting, inspiring show.

And there have been charges from some viewers that it is infantilizing.

People were selling t-shirts that said Tanner,

who was a cast member in a few seasons.

It's a Tanner is my spirit animal.

And is that good?

I don't know.

In some ways, that's dehumanizing.

But Kaylen pointed out that, well, who would Tanner be to those people

if he wasn't on this show?

Nobody would be anyone's spirit animal if this didn't exist.

He would just be another weirdo for lack of a better term

who works at a hotel,

and nobody would give him a second glance.

And so now he's a person with fans.

He's a person with a much larger social world.

And yeah, the show does provide a platform to people

and it really expands our universes.

I don't know. Maybe it just shines a light on the fact that

acceptance in modern society is kind of contingent on some of these

more palatable factors.

And is that the fault of the show?

I don't know.

Is that the responsibility of the show?

I intend to think not.

I think it's more a product of the way our society functions

and the show shines a light on it.

And so it's easy for critics to point at the show

and say, you guys are the problem

when they just turned on the light.

You know?

Right.

And I don't want to worry.

I don't want to worry.

I can't worry about it.

I can't worry about it.

I can't worry about it.

I can't worry about it.

We'll be right back.

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Love that.

I hope you have the app.

And I think the elephant in the room here is that there are a lot of unkind people in the world.

Right?

Like there are a lot of people who would or maybe even do watch the show and laugh at these folks on Love on the Spectrum.

And you wrote about the show for the Times magazine.

And one of the things you talked about was how Keyon referred to one of the things that you talked about.

And you wrote about the show for the Times magazine.

And one of the things you talked about was how Keyon referred to one cast member as being a,

quote, comic genius without even realizing it.

And that really gave me pause because I remember just thinking if that is the case, does that mean that we are laughing with him?

Or does that mean that we're laughing at him?

And I wonder with humor specifically, knowing that these folks on the show often in their own lives felt like the butt of the joke.

Or felt like outsiders and felt ridiculed.

How is humor treated specifically?

Like how does Keyon think about that line between laughing with somebody and laughing at somebody?

The balance between being laughed with or laughed at is something that Keyon and the team are thinking about constantly.

You know, there's a lot of humor in the show.

And I don't know how we navigate it.

I think it's just more of a gut instinct feeling of, you know, on the day.

But specifically in the edit, I think that's where it really kind of, you really have the chance to sit with something and make sure that it feels okay.

That's another source of frequent debates where there's something where they're like, okay, is this too far?

Yeah, I don't think there's been a time where someone has said that feels a little bit too much where we've kind of said no, just keep it.

It's good. It makes for good content.

But that's a thing to there are people who maybe don't realize what's funny about them.

But then in watching the show and getting positive feedback and seeing what people laugh at, they learn to enjoy that.

Cast members talk to me about the joy of becoming a meme and the joy of having their lines quoted back to them and the joy of seeing themselves.

So they weren't planning those as comic moments at the time.

I think that they love that people are experiencing them comedically.

You know, and it's something that I just keep thinking of as we're talking is this idea of representation.

Like that thing that Kaylin said about who would tan or be if he wasn't on this show?

Because when you're talking about representing people in media who often do not have that much visibility, I think if you look at history, the first win is just getting represented at all.

Right. And then the second win is getting represented fairly.

Like I think if you looked back on early depictions of black people or Jewish people or pick a marginalized group.

In this country at least, if you looked at early examples of them in film and television, I think you would find a lot of examples that people now might consider offensive or cringe.

And that makes me wonder whether this show, whether love on the spectrum with so little to compare it to with so few people with disabilities represented relatively speaking and other film and television shows.

I just sort of wonder if you think that this show will stand the test of time.

Like how will we look back on this?

Well, I think the difference between this and the marginalized groups that you mentioned is that I think you were talking about things that were scripted.

And this is actually real people's lives in a very intimate way.

But there is something about, you know, this is a show where the two co-creators, neither one of them has autism.

Right.

That's something to think about.

Although he and was diagnosed as being neurodivergent after starting the series and his co-creator, her son was diagnosed with autism while they were filming the first season.

And so there are these connections that they didn't even realize that they had to this group.

But when you look at a show where there's constant affirmative consent with the cast members about whether they want to keep filming.

When you hear that cast members want to keep going back and that even people who had their issues with the show like Kaelin, one of the things she was disappointed in was that she wasn't asked back.

I think that that's why viewers feel so good when they watch it.

Like everyone feels good at every stage. Like if it feels good to make it, it feels good to consume it.

You know, just to be totally candid, I'm 39, I'm single, I'm dating in New York, and I'm watching the show in preparation for talking to you.

And I'm just so floored at how directly people are communicating.

I'm watching people and I'm thinking to myself, oh my God, oh my God, all so many people want in the world who are dating and single is for somebody to know what they want and mean what they say.

And that's what I'm watching. I'm literally watching a show where people are doing that.

And it just struck such a chord in me.

And I think probably so many people who find themselves reflected in the dynamics of the show and find things that are so relatable in the dynamics of the show.

Even if the actual experience of these people is so different from their own lives.

Well, I think that's what Kean sought to make when he was doing this.

He saw that there wasn't that at least in the world of reality dating shows, which I think are reflective of the world of actual dating today.

And the unlikliest person created the unlikely a show where we're finding humanity and connection on reality TV and it's authentic, even though it's a TV show.

It's so funny that you talk about seeing this show and wanting to be in a world that's more like the show.

When it was created by Kean as something that was about a really specific community.

But like you said, it's something that anybody can find themselves in.

I don't know if we should say this kind of embarrassing.

I have nightmares that I am back to being a cast driver and I'm like driving a bus around with like casting crew on a film.

And this never happened and I never got to a point where I was directing anything or telling these stories.

I'm just really think that to be able to make something in this world of film and television that sometimes gets a little cynical and to be able to make something that people engage with that is also has a bit of purpose behind it.

I need to just keep reminding myself of that because it is pretty special to be able to do this.

And it's because of the cast, you know, it's because of their wonderful people that they are and letting us tell their stories.

Annapule, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me, Rachel.

Today's episode was produced by Luke Vanderplug with help from Tina Antillini.

It was edited by Wendy Doerr and our production manager is Franny Kartoff.

It contains music by Marion Luzano and Dan Powell and was engineered by Sophia Landman.

Annapule's book is called Enter the Villa, the unauthorized reality behind Love Island.

That's it for the daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.

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