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If Love Is Blind UK season 3 is going to be remembered for one person, surely it will be Ciara Murphy, the pilates instructor who demands a £300 minimum spend on a first date and wants to spend her entire salary on being beautiful.
The 29-year-old was instantly the most-talked-about contestant on this series, from the moment she first entered the pods right up to the moment she said ‘I do’ to gentle giant Ajay Cheema after a particularly turbulent journey to get to the altar.
The Love Is Blind season 3 reunion has finally dropped on Netflix, filmed almost a year after the cameras stopped rolling, giving each of the four married couples – a Love Is Blind record – time to live in marital bliss without a camera crew watching their every move.
Speaking to Metro, however, Ciara says the reunion was ‘clouded’ by drama with Jack Bradshaw, the 30-year-old Cornish chef/salesman who has rightly or wrongly been given the show’s ‘villain edit’.
Ciara and Jack had palpable chemistry in the pods; the flirting was shameless and the laughter endless until it died a sudden, bitter death. Later, when the couples met the rest of the cast for the first time, tensions erupted when Jack claimed Ciara told him he was her number one, something they still disagree on to this day.
Hosts Emma Willis and Matt Willis were determined to get to the bottom of the row during the tense get-together, but Ciara clearly wishes she had more time to focus on her flourishing relationship, moving to Australia with her husband when others wouldn’t move to the Midlands for theirs, and showing a different side to her.
‘I feel like the reunion was clouded by all of the drama that had happened on screen that was drawn up again, and again we didn’t get to fully explain what we’ve been up to, how our relationship’s got so much stronger,’ she says.
‘I didn’t really get the opportunity to talk about the other sides of me and the other sides of our relationship.’
Ciara felt she was painted as somewhat of a ‘two-dimensional’ character on the show, solely defined by drama and her unapologetic lust for a man with a hefty bank balance rather than her connection with Ajay.
Subsequently, she has been branded a ‘red flag’ by large swathes of the audience and has been paying attention to the comments on social media.
‘I knew I was going to face a few questions, I knew not everyone was going to love me and I thought I’d have a few fans, but my god, I didn’t think it was going to be this polarising or blow up this much,’ she says.
‘There is a lot of negativity so I’m trying to ignore that, but I have seen the really lovely comments from women, especially, who are like, “I love what you stand for,’ or “I wish more women were like you.” I am seeing the kindness as well.’
She concedes: ‘I’m never going to be everybody’s cup of tea, but we can try.’
The backlash hasn’t fazed her doting husband, Ajay, however, who was quick to leap to her defence.
‘Online there’s this perception that Ciara might be high maintenance and don’t get me wrong in the pod, I heard some of these expectations and thought, “What did I get myself into here?” But going to Australia, Ciara took it all in a stride.
‘We literally lived, worked there, immersed ourselves locally, and she took all the challenges we faced all in stride, trusted me every step of the way, didn’t cause any issues, and she was just like the perfect partner to have.
‘She’s been so low key, she takes such good care of me, as I do for her as well. And I think it’s a really soft side to Ciara that I’m looking forward to the public seeing more of.’
Love Is Blind: The Reunion is available to stream on Netflix now.