MTV’s long-running dating series Are You The One is set to return with 16 new love-seekers for the show’s eighth season.
This year, all sixteen contestants identify as sexually-fluid (or bisexual+) in what host Ryan Devlin describes as “the most ambitious matchmaking experiment ever attempted.”
The participants are flown to Hawaii for a summer vacation on a mission to find love, and take home part of a $1 million prize.
“The matchmakers got pretty deep into all of the contestants’ past relationship history, so they would do these interviews with the contestants and their family, friends, and exes. All that information was combined and analysed,” executive producer Tiffany Williams told EW.
The team have also recruited Dr Frankie as their relationship expert for this season, a mental health professional who focuses on the LGBTIQ+ community.
“It’s still a fun, drama-filled salacious ridiculous reality show,” executive producer Rob LaPlante said, “But it’s now got a social message underneath it.”
“If you go back to the history of MTV, the very beginning, I worked on The Real World. They were putting gay characters on television and doing things that were turning heads back then and creating noise and awareness all at the same time,” LaPlante told Variety.
“This is another step in that direction.”
OIP Staff
