Apparently, love is blind to a healthy work environment. That’s what’s alleged in a new class-action lawsuit filed this week.
Stephen Richardson, a contestant on Season 7 of the Netflix dating show “Love Is Blind,” is suing the streaming service and the production companies behind the series, alleging they failed to pay overtime and minimum wages and didn’t provide accurate and itemized wage statements and uninterrupted meal periods. The class action was filed Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
Richardson alleges in the lawsuit that producers wrongly classified him and the rest of the cast, who he says regularly worked 20-hour shifts, in order to pay them less. The lawsuit lists Kinetic Content, Delirium TV and Netflix as defendants.
Producers exerted “complete domination over [participants’] time, schedule, and their ability to eat, drink, and sleep, and communicate with the outside world during the period of employment” and further restricted participants’ actions after the show wrapped, the complaint says. The conditions were “unsafe and inhumane,” the lawsuit says.
“Love Is Blind” follows a group of single men and women searching for love the old-fashioned way, by communicating blindly through a wall. Couples are kept from each other until they establish an engagement, which pays off with unexpected facial reactions that express emotions including great dissatisfaction, confusion or a sigh of relief.
In recent years, the show has been hit with similar lawsuits from other former cast members. Last year, Season 5 participant Renee Poche and Season 2 veteran Nick Thompson filed a lawsuit against the production companies after she was penalized for breaching her contract by publicly discussing her experience on the show.
“I am now being sued for $4 million despite earning $8,000 for my participation on the show,” Poche told USA Today.
Poche alleged the production companies were retaliating against her for speaking about the working conditions she endured. After feeling “like a prisoner” while working on the show, she says, she was cut from the final version of the series.
Season 2 cast member Jeremy Hartwell sued Kinetic Content and Netflix in 2022 for allegedly violating labor laws and creating an “unsafe and inhumane” work environment. Then a number of unnamed former cast members spoke to Insider in April 2023, alleging producers subjected them to 20-hour production days, rarely allowed them to go outside, failed to provide adequate food and mental-health services and ignored their pleas for help.
Throughout the years, reality TV has tried to protect itself from real-life lawyers with nondisclosure agreements and provisions requiring disputes be taken to arbitration. The new complaint has Richardson as the named defendant along with “all others similarly situated.”
The accuser is looking for unspecified damages. Richardson, Netflix, Kinetic Content and Delirium TV did not immediately respond Wednesday to The Times’ request for comment.
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