Love Is Blind season six alum Chelsea Blackwell exclusively told E! News whether she’s open to getting engaged again after revealing her new boyfriend Tim Teeter.
Chelsea Blackwell is not blind to the perks of marriage.
The Love Is Blind season six alum—who recently debuted her romance with Tim Teeter following her engagement to Jimmy Presnell on the show—is “absolutely” hoping to get engaged again and make it down the aisle.
“That’s definitely the end goal,” she told E! News in an exclusive interview. “I’m 32, so I’m ready to have my partner and hopeful that things are going in that direction now, so we’ll see.”
Indeed, it’s been a “wild journey” for Chelsea and Tim, who met on a dating app right before the reunion episode aired in March.
“That was a crazy time in my life, obviously,” she noted. “But it’s been so special.”
And while the wedding planner kept Tim “a secret” from fans for months, she was “grateful” he was privately by her side to help her navigate the fallout from the Netflix dating show (including that Megan Fox drama).
“It was the most perfect timing for me, because he was a really good distraction for me to escape the loudness,” Chelsea explained. “He was just a really good support for me and shoulder to lean on.”
While Tim had “no experience” in the world of reality TV, he was a great listener and her ultimate “hype guy.”
“That made us really strong, and it was a great foundation for our relationship,” she continued. “Everyone saw me deal with haters, and he’s the kind of guy who just doesn’t care what people think. So, he’s like, ‘Don’t listen to him. Like, brush it off.’ He was really good to balance out how I was feeling about that and just remind me, ‘It doesn’t matter; you’re amazing.'”
Scott Stockton PhotographyHowever, Tim had watched her season of Love Is Blind prior to swiping right, which Chelsea admitted “scared” her at first.
“The first question out of his mouth was, ‘Hey, for the record, are you really that crazy?’ He made it silly, but I mean, fair question,” she quipped to E!. “It’s reality TV, and people saw me in a certain light, and so, I joked about it. I was like, ‘It depends on how you treat me.’ He’s like, ‘I like a little crazy anyway.'”
@chelseadblackwell Im getting ready to get my nails done, dont come for me 😂 #loveisblind #boyfriendstorytime #fyp #hardlaunch ♬ original sound – Chelseablackwell
The flight attendant—who is now working on her YouTube channel and podcast—confessed that she was worried she would be single forever, because any potential matches would judge her based on Love Is Blind.
So, when meeting Tim, Chelsea experienced a “weird dynamic of feeling like you have to prove yourself, but also being super confident in who you are as a person, but the whole world knows you as this character.”
Ultimately, a mutual friend vouched for Tim and the pair met up.
“He’s a really great person. He’s so kind to me, he’s so caring. He’s just a genuine human being,” she gushed. “I will never find anyone who will treat me better. And I’m just very blessed to have met him in the time of my life I did.”
Instagram/Tim TeeterWant to learn more about the cast of Love Is Blind? Read on for all the secrets about how they were cast on the series.
Adam Rose/Netflix © 2023AD Smith, Season 6
AD—a.k.a. Amber Desiree—could have missed her opportunity to be on Love Is Blind altogether.
As the real estate agent explained, she was working at a nightclub owned by her ex when she was recruited.
“Whoever was on casting scouted me via my Instagram and they went to the nightclub’s Instagram,” AD recalled on an episode of Nick Viall’s podcast The Viall Files. “So they called him looking for me, but obviously they did not know our relationship. So they’re like, ‘Hey, this is such and such, and we’re casting for a dating show.’”
Even though AD and her ex had already split, she continued, he told the recruiter the two were still together. And when she found out his response, she quickly set the record straight.
“I was like, ‘Give me her number right now,’” AD said. “‘Cause we were broken up for a very long time.”
Adam Rose/Netflix © 2023 Clay Gravesande, Season 6
As for her former fiancé Clay, he said he was also recruited through Instagram.
“I just got a DM from one of the casting directors,” the entrepreneur shared with radio station WBLS. “They were recruiting people in the Charlotte area. They called it ‘The Charlotte Singles Project.’ So, they reached out to me, and I didn’t really know what to expect.”
So, Clay decided to go through with the interview process—like, a lot of interviews.
“Next thing you know, after, like, interview seven,” he added, “they told me I’m officially a cast member of season six.”
Adam Rose/Netflix © 2023 Brittany Mills, Season 6
So, what exactly do those interviews entail?
“You have quite a few,” Brittany revealed on the De-Influenced With Dani Austin podcast. “You’ve got on-the-phone interviews, you’ve got FaceTime calls or Zoom. And they just honestly ask you like, ‘OK, why are you wanting to date?’ Or like, ‘Why are you still single? How do you feel about dating? How do you feel about dating in Charlotte?’”
The senior client partner said she’d just moved to Charlotte at the time and heard rumors the dating scene was “awful.” So when a Love Is Blind recruiter DM’ed her on Instagram, Brittany added, she did a follow-up call to learn about the show she’d never seen.
A few interviews later and “lo and behold,” Brittany, who got engaged to castmate Kenneth Gorham before they split outside the pods, said, “here I go.”
Adam Rose/Netflix © 2023 Johnny McIntyre, Season 6
Instagram isn’t the only social media channel the casting team uses, either.
“I was initially approached for Love Is Blind on LinkedIn, so I kinda thought it was a joke,” Johnny shared on The Weekly Scoop With CJ Sykes. “I knew about the show, and I knew the whole concept of it. But I didn’t know they approached you on LinkedIn. So I kind of messaged them back and I was like, ‘Hey, let’s do it. I’m free for a call right now. Can you call me?’ Sent my number in. And then like 10 seconds later I got a call, and that was my first ‘interview’ for the process.”
While Johnny said he received another call the following day and that the process continued to progress, he noted he then didn’t hear anything back for about a month or two.
“That’s when they were telling me, ‘Hey, you’re officially going to be an alternate,'” the account executive recalled. “‘So we have 16 guys. You’re No. 16. If someone drops out, then you have a spot.’”
As viewers now know, he ended up securing that spot and marrying Amy Cortés on the show.
Adam Rose/Netflix © 2023 Chelsea Blackwell, Season 6
However, the casting process doesn’t always start on social media.
“A lot of the people got scouted—through LinkedIn, through Instagram, through TikTok, everything. Every person was different,” Chelsea, who got engaged to Jimmy Presnell on the show before their pre-wedding split, said on Sarah Alysse Bobo’s Stress Free SOULutions Podcast. “I and Laura [Dadisman] were, I think, one of the only girls who actually applied.”
After hearing that Love Is Blind was casting in Charlotte and getting encouragement from friends and family, she added, the flight attendant decided to give the process a go.
“I’m like, ‘You know what? I’ll apply. Why not?’” Chelsea noted. “And then the next day, I got a call back.”
Adam Rose/Netflix © 2023Jessica Vestal, Season 6
Jessica also applied for the Netflix series. Although, she initially had some reservations.
“They had been casting in Charlotte for a couple months, and I’d heard about [it]. Everyone heard about [it],” the mom to daughter Autumn recalled on The Viall Files. “I had been getting messages on Instagram and stuff about it. I thought, ‘You know what? I’ve never seen anyone on the show that had a child.’ So I just kind of looked right over it. I was like, ‘They probably wouldn’t cast someone who had a child anyway.’”
But after a night of “poking around online,” Jessica continued, she found the application link and decided to check it out.
“I saw on there they had questions like, ‘Do you have a child? Would you be interested in dating people who have children?’” the executive assistant, who also formed a connection with Jimmy in the pods, added. “I was like, ‘Maybe they do.’ So I just filled it out on a whim thinking I would never hear anything back from it. And the next morning, they called me.”
Monty Brinton/Netflix © 2023 Izzy Zapata, Season 5
Going back to season five, you could say Izzy was just called to be on Love Is Blind—literally.
“I was working out one day on my lunch break, and I just got this phone call from an L.A. number,” he recalled on The Viall Files. “I thought it was a telemarketer. So I ignored it twice, and then I got a long text saying, ‘Hey, this is so and so. I’m casting for Love Is Blind. You’ve ever seen it? We’d love to talk to you. I was like, ‘There’s no way this is real.'”
But sure enough, it was.
“I called her, and she’s like, ‘Add me on IG right now so you know I’m real.’ And so I added her, and I was like, ‘Holy s–t! Yeah, you are real,'” Izzy, who got engaged to Stacy Snyder before they parted ways at the altar, continued. “She’s like, ‘I love your profile. I would love to get a Zoom interview with you.'”
Monty Brinton/Netflix © 2023 Uche Okoroha, Season 5
Some Love Is Blind cast members were contacted after having previously been considered for other shows. Take Uche, for example.
“The first show that this production studio reached out to me for was Married at First Sight,” the attorney said on Rachel Uchitel‘s Miss Understood podcast, “and that was like a year or two years before Love Is Blind.”
While Uche suggested Married at First Sight wasn’t the right fit for him, he was open to going on Love Is Blind.
“It was more of like prompting over time, where people were reaching out to me for different shows,” Uche—who dated Aaliyah Cosby in the pods before she learned of his pre-show relationship with castmate Lydia Velez Gonzalez and left the experiment—added. “And I thought, ‘OK. What the hell? I’m still single. I should just go for it.'”
Love Is Blind. Kwame in Season 4 of Love Is Blind. Cr. Netflix © 2023 Kwame Appiah, Season 4
Another Love Is Blind star who was first scouted for Married at First Sight? Kwame.
“The way that I ended up on Love Is Blind was because when I first got back to the States in I think 2018 [or] 2019, someone tried to recruit me for Married at First Sight,” the athlete, who played soccer in Sweden, said on Reinvented With Jennifer Eckhart. “When they reached out to me, I remember the conversation was so funny: ‘Hey, you don’t know me, but I got your number from this person and I just wanted to ask you—would you think that you’re ready to get married?’ I was like, ‘Woah!’ I don’t think so.’ And then I just kinda moved on.”
But after talking to his sister, Kwame continued, he decided to give Married at First Sight a try. However, he said he realized it wasn’t a fit after a day or two of filming.
And while it wasn’t at first sight, he did end up getting married to Chelsea Griffin on Love Is Blind.
Sara Mally/Netflix Colleen Reed, Season 3
As for season three’s Colleen, she had previously been considered for the Netflix show Sexy Beasts.
“I did, like, one interview with them, maybe, and I was like, ‘This is so stupid,” the ballerina recalled on the Out of the Pods podcast with Love Is Blind‘s Deepti Vempati and Natalie Lee. “And then I just never heard from them, and then COVID hit or something along those lines.”
She also had her doubts when a member of the Love Is Blind casting team reached out on Instagram, with her originally thinking the inquiry was fake.
“I was just like, ‘Whatever,'” Colleen, who wed Matt Bolton on the show, continued. “And I just kept going through the steps. And then, voilà, there I was in the pods.”
Sara Mally/Netflix © 2022 Nancy Rodriguez, Season 3
But if you want to hear more about the application process, just ask Nancy—who said she applied on a girls’ trip to Cancún.
“My best friend DM’ed me the Instagram post, like the casting post,” she recalled on Out of the Pods. “And I looked at it and immediately recognized Love Is Blind because of season one.”
Though the real estate investor said it took her three attempts to submit her application due to “spotty” Wi-Fi, she appreciated the lengthy questionnaire.
“Personally, I really enjoyed the application process and the interview process because they ask you so many in-depth questions about you and who you are, and what you believe in, and what are you ready for?” Nancy added. “I remember one of the questions [was] like, ‘Name three things that your friends would say about you, but name three things that your partners would say about you from the past.’”
“It just really made me think ‘who am I?’” she continued. “And if I don’t get on this show, I kinda feel like I went through a really cool, unique experience of just going through the interview process.”
Of course, she did get on the show—accepting a proposal from Bartise Bowden before they broke up at the altar.
Ser Baffo/Netflix © 2022 Natalie Lee, Season 2
In fact, Natalie—who also applied—shed some light on how these answers can be used during the selection process.
“It’s not random people that are chosen for this show,” the consulting manager, who got engaged to Shayne Jansen before their wedding day split, explained on her podcast with Deepti. “There is a compatibility factor, and we go through multiple tests to make sure there are potential matches for everyone.”
Paras Griffin/Getty ImagesCameron Hamilton, Season 1
As for how the very first season of Love Is Blind was cast, well, it doesn’t sound like the process was all that different. In fact, Cameron says the casting team reached out to both him and his eventual wife Lauren Speed-Hamilton.
“For me, it came in the form of a text message,” the data scientist shared on the couple’s Youtube channel. “I ignored the text message at first. I thought it was kind of shady. Two weeks later, I get a voicemail from casting. I call them back. They tell me about the premise of the show.”
After hearing the rundown, Cameron continued, he initially thought, “Who could be crazy enough to propose to someone after talking to them for two weeks through a wall? Obviously, that was me.”
But the more he learned about the series, the more interested he became.
“At first it’s like, ‘Ah, I’ll just fill out the casting application and then jump through the hoops,’” he remembered. “And then the more I did it, the more I was getting invested in the show—to the point where I felt like fate was really pulling me for the show. I felt like something was really telling me I needed to do this show.”
Netflix Jessica Batten, Season 1
Meanwhile, Jessica learned about a Love Is Blind casting call from one of her friends.
“She used to be a news anchor in Atlanta,” she explained of her pal to Us Weekly. “So she was kinda in that scene, and she had an agent send her the casting call. Of course, she was in a relationship at the time. She sent it my way because I happened to be the only single person in our entire group of friends.”
Wanting to try something new, Jessica continued, she decided to check it out.
“I ended up talking to the casting producer, and he sold me on this idea of stepping away from social media dating, swiping left on people’s faces. It’s such a desensitizing thing. This is a chance to really get to know somebody and for them to get to know you for who you are on the inside. It was a great time in my life to hear that pitch, and I was totally sold.”
Jessica ended up going on the show and getting engaged to Mark Cuevas. However, they split on their wedding day.
Araya Doheny/Getty Images for NetflixDamian Powers, Season 1
Another way Love Is Blind recruiters can find singles looking for their match? By scoping out the dating apps.
“I’m probably one of the most interesting cases because they actually found me on Tinder,” Damian—who proposed to Giannina Gibelli in the pods before saying no at the altar—explained on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “I started chatting with this girl, hit it off. She’s like, ‘Add me on Instagram.’ Had a pretty good connection, and then she’s like, ‘I’m a casting producer.’ And I’m like, ‘Catfish, ha ha.'”
