- A participant on season 5 of "Love Is Blind" recently sued the show's production company.
- Tran Dang says that she was sexually assaulted during filming, and producers didn't step in to stop it.
Tran Dang, a participant on "Love Is Blind" season 5, alleged in a recent lawsuit that she was sexually assaulted by her then-fiancé Thomas Smith while filming the popular dating show, and that producers knew about the assault but didn't step in to stop it.
It's a major allegation against the show — one that "Love Is Blind" creator Chris Coelen said in a Friday interview with People that production would have taken seriously if Dang had made them aware of the incident. (Neither Dang nor Smith were featured in the final edit of the show's fifth season, nor were they listed as participants when the cast was announced. Smith's lawyers told Insider that their client denies the allegations.)
"If anybody ever came to us and said they felt unsafe in any way, we would immediately remove them from the experiment and talk to them, and try to get to the bottom of it," Coelen told People. "Unfortunately, in this case, that kind of sentiment was never addressed to us in any way, nor was any alleged wrongdoing brought to our attention ever."
Dang also alleged in her suit that she was falsely imprisoned during her time on the show, a claim Coelen called "preposterous."
Representatives for Coelen, Netflix, and production companies Delirium and Kinetic Content didn't immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.
Dang's lawyers responded in part: "The producers are throwing money at the problem by spending an inordinate amount of money on losing legal positions that do nothing but delay the parties from having their day in Court. They lost on three distinct legal issues before the trial court and then filed three separate appeals to multiply the proceedings we have to wade through before finally trying this case. But we are confident that Ms. Dang's position will be vindicated once we get there and are committed to seeing it through all of the way. We have to hold the show producers accountable. We have an ethical duty to our client to do so, but also feel a moral obligation to the next generation of reality show participants."
Dang's allegations are serious, and some fans have likely been left wondering how the show can proceed amid these accusations. But recent reality TV history suggests it's rare a lawsuit or scandal is massive enough to sink an entire franchise.
This is hardly the first time a reality TV show has been embroiled in allegations of sexual assault
In 2017, filming on "Bachelor in Paradise" was suspended after contestants Corinne Olympios and DeMario Jackson were involved in a drunken sexual encounter that was reportedly captured on camera and made third parties on the show uncomfortable. The footage was never released, and "Paradise" resumed filming the season without Olympios and Jackson after an internal investigation found no wrongdoing. (Jackson was later accused of sexual assault in 2022 by two separate women and has denied both claims.)
The Spanish version of "Big Brother" faced its own scandal when a contestant was reportedly sexually assaulted while she was drunk in 2017, and was shown the footage during an interview the following day. (Neither the assault footage nor the victim's reaction to the footage aired.) Both the contestants involved in the incident were removed from the show — the contestant who was accused of committing the assault later went to jail as a result.
MTV paused production on "Are You The One?" in 2021 after a former contestant told the Daily Beast that she was drugged by production and sexually assaulted that same night by a fellow cast member on the show. Lighthearted Entertainment, the show's production company, denied the allegations. The show returned for season nine on Paramount+ with a new production company after about a three-year break in January 2023.
And on a recent episode of Bravo's "Below Deck Down Under," producers were shown intervening in what could have become a sexual assault when a drunken cast member climbed naked into bed with an inebriated cast member who did not consent.
Despite the serious accusations leveled at contestants, none of them ultimately sunk the shows they appeared on. (The "Bachelor" franchise attempted to install some safeguards after the "Paradise" incident by instituting a two-drink-per-hour maximum for contestants.)
And while the long-term ramifications of the lawsuit against the "Love Is Blind" production company remain to be seen, given how other shows have survived similar sexual assault scandals, it would ultimately be a shock if "Love Is Blind" went off the air as a result. The show has already weathered a separate lawsuit brought by season two contestants who accused the show of depriving them of food and sleep.
But the show should take a moment to reckon with its treatment of cast members, and make sure that there are rock-solid safeguards in place to ensure participants feel protected and secure, regardless of if they make the final edit or not.