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A Love Is Blind UK contestant has revealed that there was a lot more that went down in those pods that viewers didn’t get to see – including five other engagements.
The UK version of the hit US dating experiment landed on Netflix earlier this month, introducing us to a fresh batch of 30 singletons who were ready to fall in love, sight unseen.
Ahead of the finale episodes, which will be dropping on the platform this week, many have questioned which of the couples will say yes at the altar, and who will awkwardly end their romances in front of their friends and family.
While we wait for details on the futures of Freddie, Cat, Ollie, Demi and co, their castmate has spilled some gossip on the things that didn’t air, and it all sounds very juicy.
Shirley Bekker joined the cast to look for love but ended up rarely being given screen time, despite having a huge romantic journey of her own.
Taking to TikTok, the junior doctor explained that she had been inundated with questions about why she wasn’t featured as much, with fans begging to know what went down.
Shirley Bekker unpacked her experience on Love Is Blind UK (Picture: Netflix)
‘Netflix published a cast of 15 women and 15 men,’ she told followers in a new video. ‘Although you see a total of six engagements, 11 of our cast got engaged.
‘There were only four of us who didn’t get engaged and I was one of them. That’s a little bit embarrassing.
‘With it only being 11 total episodes, you have to think that only certain stories can get followed all the way to the altar, because there just isn’t a way to fit in that many stories into that few episodes.
‘As for the stories that did not end in engagement, it would’ve been interesting to still see those romantic journeys and to see that some romantic journeys don’t end in engagement, some end in heartbreak. But that’s just not how the show works in this case.
‘The madness that went down in the couples that you didn’t see… A girl proposing to a guy, we had more triangles, we had so much going on, but as you can understand, we can only show so much.’
Honestly, Netflix, please just release the tapes!
Shirley said that the 15 female contestants initially go on dates with all 15 men, but as time goes on, focus more on those they are feeling a romantic connection with, and see less of everyone else.
She realized that there was one specific person she was developing feelings for after going on other dates for ‘three or four days’, and decided to close herself off to all other men.
Shirley developed a close bond with Richie before it all came crashing down (Picture: Netflix)
He popped the question to Ria in unaired scenes(Picture: Netflix)
‘Quite simply put, if I wasn’t continuing my journey with that person, I was not going to continue that journey at all,’ the former teacher vowed, later naming her co-star as Richie. ‘I was a ride or die, as far as the pods went, for this one person.’
Unfortunately for Shirley, the sports turf maintenance director eventually told her that he didn’t feel the same and had found love with someone else ‘more special’, named Ria.
Richie and Ria ended up getting engaged in unaired scenes, while Shirley asked the producers if she could leave the experiment early as she no longer wanted to take part.
Unpacking her sudden return home from the experience as a single woman, she shared that it was ‘difficult’ and that she ‘struggled’ coming to terms with how things went down.
Emma Willis and her husband, Matt Willis, served as hosts for the UK version (Picture: Netflix)
However, she cryptically revealed that this wasn’t the end of her story with Richie, who ‘reached out’ when the experiment ended.
Although she kept quiet on the details for the sake of everyone’s privacy, she teased that ‘everything that happened after that was truly more hurtful than everything in the pods’.
Shirley also added that she has no negative feelings towards the process as she is now dating someone completely new, and is actually ‘so, so grateful for the position I’m in today and the person I’m with today’.
Love Is Blind UK is available to stream on Netflix now, with new episodes dropping on Wednesday.
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