The Bachelor, Love Is Blind and Love Island are three of the most successful dating shows of the last quarter century. They were all created by men (some more controversial than others).
There have been a few exceptions of women being behind noisy dating formats before: Singled Out and Too Hot To Handle, as well as MILF Manor, were co-created by women but Sharon Sussman, Laura Gibson and Anna Edwinson all shared credit with a man.
Age of Attraction, Netflix’s latest hook-up with the genre, however, was created by two women: Jennifer O’Connell and Rebecca Quinn, founders of Velvet Hammer Media.
The show, which premieres its first five episodes tomorrow (Wednesday, March 11), ostensibly asks the question: Is Love Ageless?
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“We were seeing a lot of age gap dating in our own lives and all around us,” O’Connell told Deadline. “It’s real, it’s happening, and I think the culture is celebrating it in a different way. From a female gaze, we noticed more women openly talking about dating younger men. If anyone was going to tell a story about women and men dating outside their own age, we felt we would do a really good job with it. There have been a lot of shows out there where they label, especially women, as cougars or MILFs, and we didn’t want this show to be that.”
Essentially, the pair didn’t want this to be MILF Manor.
“We wanted to normalize it and make it feel, if people, even if they were different stages, if they wanted the same things out of life, that it was ok. We felt we would bring that to the table from the format to casting, and then how the women are portrayed and edited as well,” she added.
Quinn said buyers were interested when they first took out the pitch. “Age is just a number is a relatable concept. I think people were attracted to that. I think where we had to stay true to ourselves, we have good partners on it, is you can go two ways with this kind of show. You can make it where you’re poking fun at age gaps and you’re judging them, and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe that young girls with an old guy, or you can make more of like an earnest love story. We’re celebrating it.”
The opening episode kicks off earnestly with a seemingly fast-match between a man and a woman who are clearly different ages, but not clearly by how much.
But there’s also some laughs thrown in. One contestant says, “I could date you or your mom”, while another adds, “I don’t know if these guys are my age, my dad’s age or my grandpa’s age.”
O’Connell said, “The truth is I think we could even have even more fun with it in future seasons. We cracked a few jokes about Taylor Swift, and things like that, where there’s definitely a cultural difference between generations. Sometimes we kind of touch on that and I would love to do more of that. But it was never about poking fun at people.”
A great idea on paper doesn’t always translate to television and the pair were nervous because “it doesn’t come alive until you cast it,” as Quinn said. Age of Attraction had casting challenges that other shows don’t: they needed to find people genuinely looking for that perhaps didn’t look exactly their age.
“One of the things that we really debated was, ‘Are we going to cast like Love Is Blind, from one small city, because then they have a better chance of sticking together because they’re logistically closer. Or do we open it up?’ We were pretty adamant it had to be nationwide, because this was going to be a hard casting and no way could we limit it to one city. I’m thankful we did that,” said Quinn, who commended Jacqui Pittman on the feat.
The series is hosted by Nick Viall, a 45-year old man who starred on The Bachelor after finishing runner-up in two consecutive seasons of The Bachelorette, and his 27-year model and former surgical technologist wife Natalie Joy.
It was filmed between Whistler and Vancouver, helped by some Canadian tax credits. “There’s been a million dating shows on tropical islands, and I think we wanted to stand out a little bit, but also find a place that’s really beautiful,” said O’Connell. “If you think about someone of a certain age, you know, not 19 years old, wants to go on a nice retreat, we were trying to create a very high-end resort type situation where you would really be able to enjoy nature and do lots of outdoorsy things. It was nice to shoot somewhere that you haven’t seen a million times on reality TV.”
Velvet Hammer initially chose to follow 40 singletons and as the show came to the end of its first season, there were 14 couples. “We felt really good about the fact that 14 couples were hatched and most couple had an age difference,” she added. This group was then whittled down to six couples followed across the series.
Quinn added, “We wanted this to be a new format that has legs that could go on for a long time. Every decision we made we knew was going to impact not only this season, but hopefully other seasons. That’s why we stacked the deck. There’s no world where I would have ever thought we would work on a dating show where we had that many people. It’s expensive. You’re not going to be able to follow all the stories. But this was a true experiment.
Audiences also don’t find out the ages of the contestants until they hook up in the Promise Room. This was up for much debate during the development process, in much the same way it was for mystery hit The Traitors.
“There was a sliding door moment with the format where there was a debate about whether we reveal the ages of everyone right from the start to the audience so they can play along. There was another group of people who wanted to keep it a secret because it would keep the viewers hooked and trying to crack that code,” said O’Connell. “It was a major debate across sex line. All the women wanted to keep it mysterious and the men wanted to play along.”
Netflix is high on the show and is rolling it out in three tranches; after tomorrow’s first five episodes, three more episodes will stream from Wednesday, March 18 and the finale will run on Wednesday, March 25.
The pair hope that there’s plenty of room for more dating shows in the market. They may well be right given that The Bachelor is nearly 25 years old and Love Is Blind is in its tenth season.
“Love is aspirational. It’s just super relatable and there’s a whole new generation of viewers now that love dating shows,” added O’Connell.
Dating is only one area that Velvet Hammer wants to conquer. The WME Group-backed company has made food shows like The CW’s The Big Bakeover and Roku’s Best Bite Wins and was involved in ID’s true-crime docuseries Ruby & Jodi: A Cult of Sin and Influence. The first pitch that Quinn, who previously produced Wipeout, and O’Connell took out when they formed the company was a gladiator-style challenge competition series.
“Our next mission is the big physical competition show,” said Quinn. “In just the same way it’s nice to see romance done from a female POV, how would a Wipeout be from our POV? Because it would be different and a swing.”