The $20,000 Way 'Love Is Blind' Hinted At How They Really Felt About Joe On Season 9, According To An Ex-TV Exec
The former reality TV executive noticed the show's subtle statement on the cast member.
Netflix There’s something about Joe Ferrucci. If you’ve been watching Love Is Blind Denver, you’re probably very familiar with Joe’s love story with Madison Maidenberg. The Season 9 stars met in the pods and developed a connection that turned into an engagement. However, after their initial meeting, things started to go south.
For fans watching the show, it seemed obvious that things weren’t going to work out for Joe and Madison. From Joe getting too intoxicated during one of the cast meet-ups to the disagreements that he and Madison had, it was clear that a successful wedding was unlikely. And, as it turns out, producers saw everything unfolding right in front of their eyes — and they let everyone know how they felt about Joe with one move.
According to former reality television executive Ilia Yasmeen, producers do have “favorites” and “least favorites” while filming — and Joe apparently fell under the latter. In a video shared on TikTok, Yasmeen revealed that there was a major $20,000 clue that proves it.
Netflix played Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Manchild’ when Joe left the tux fitting.
Many fans noticed that Netflix chose a particular song to play when Joe abruptly left the tux fitting prior to making one of the biggest decisions of his life. Joe was completely checked out during the segment and walked out of the fitting without really choosing what he wanted to wear during his upcoming wedding to Madison.
It was at this point that Netflix played the song “Manchild” by Sabrina Carpenter, allowing production to share how they really felt about Joe and his antics.
According to Yasmeen, Netflix paid a sync license in order to use the song on the show. She estimated that the streaming giant would have paid somewhere between $10,000 and $30,000 just to play the portion of the song that they did.
“If that doesn’t tell you what they thought of Joe behind the scenes, I don’t know what will,” she said.
Music is a big part of ‘Love is Blind's’ vibe.
While you may not think that music plays a major role in a show like Love Is Blind, well, you’d be wrong. In fact, quite a bit of thought goes into what type of music will be played during what scenes.
While the early seasons of 'Love is Blind' famously used royalty-free music hyper-specific to the scenes they were in, in February 2025, the show’s creator Chris Coelen spoke with Variety about choosing songs for the show’s upcoming Season 8.
“It’s our fifth anniversary, and music has always been such a big part of the show,” Coelen told the outlet. “We decided to creatively lean into celebrating the great love songs — not all of them, obviously, there’s no way to get every great love song in there, but we got a lot of terrific love songs.”
“There are a lot of songs that we’ve talked about that we didn’t get a chance to use that I’m hoping in future seasons we will,” Coelen continued, adding, “so much of our experiences around love come from love songs and music. It is evocative of our feelings. Being able to incorporate some of these great songs and great artists into the show is really exciting, and hopefully an elevating, entertaining experience for the audience.”
Producers influence reality shows in many ways.
In another video posted to TikTok by Yasmeen, she shared some other ways that producers tend to influence reality television shows and what you see on your screen after everything gets edited.
Using Love Island as an example, Yasmeen shared that producers can ask questions in a certain way to elicit a different response from a contestant. There are also instances where producers set up scenes, getting all the women together in one area to talk about a certain person or event without the guys around.
Yasmeen also notes that there’s a great deal of consideration that goes into various challenges, when they will take place, and how that information gets relayed to the reality stars. All of these things can really influence the outcome of a particular scene and make it go one way or another.
Effie Orfanides is a contributing writer for YourTango who has been reporting on celebrity and entertainment news since 2009.
