“It’s happened a couple times in previous seasons where someone comes to us and say, ‘Hey, I know someone on the other side,’” creator Chris Coelen tells EW.

Love Is Blind creator explains how they handled season 10 contestants who knew each other before filming

"It's happened a couple times in previous seasons where someone comes to us and say, 'Hey, I know someone on the other side,'" creator Chris Coelen tells EW.

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a staff writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2019 and is a published author. Her work has previously appeared in *TV Guide Magazine*, E! News/E! Online, *The Hollywood Reporter*, Mashable, Bustle, IGN, DCComics.com, Inverse, *The Daily Northwestern*, and more.

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February 18, 2026 10:00 a.m. ET

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Alex Henderson and Priyanka Grandhi on 'Love Is Blind'. Credit:

Adam Rose/Netflix (2)

**This article contains spoilers about *Love Is Blind* season 10, episodes 1-9.**

Two people on *Love Is Blind* season 10 knew each other before dating in the pods.

In the latest batch of episodes released Wednesday, Alex Henderson reveals in a confessional interview that he and Priyanka Grandhi knew each other before going on the show. This was never previously addressed during the pod portion of the season (Priyanka was barely featured in earlier episodes, as she did not get engaged), and Alex delivered this bombshell reveal as if he was simply talking about the weather. But this is a seriously shocking piece of information for a show that's based on not knowing anything about the people you're dating!

When * *spoke to Alex about this twist, he said that he and Priyanka "never" had a romantic past, and they're just "friends of friends." He explains that it didn't impact their experience in the pods since they weren't interested in continuing to date each other on the show after realizing the knew each other.

Alex Henderson on 'Love Is Blind'.

Courtesy of Netflix

"She's dated a couple of my friends in Chicago," he tells EW. "I wouldn't necessarily call it a close friendship. We ran into the same friend group in Chicago when I lived there for a little bit. Didn't really hang out a ton. We never crossed paths in that way."

Alex — who went on to get engaged to Ashley Carpenter — explains that he and Priyanka discovered their prior connection "pretty early on" in the pods.

"I mean, you have a conversation with somebody, you kind of know who they are a little bit," Alex says. "You can put together, 'Okay, this is someone that I know,' pretty early."

Priyanka Grandhi with the other 'Love Is Blind' season 10 women.

Courtesy of Netflix

Alex didn't want to "tarnish" Priyanka's *Love Is Blind* experience just because they randomly knew each other before the show, so he quietly ranked her at the very bottom of his list to end their pod dates after that first day.

"I didn't really see the need to really bring attention to it, because I didn't want to date her from what I already knew," he says. "So it was like, 'Okay, I'm going to put this on the lowest [spot] and just let it sit here, and then move on to the women that I would like to date. It's not really anything that I can do ahead of time to say, 'Hey, I know this person,' or whatever. It's just one of those, 'I'm going to go through the process to the best of my ability.'"

According to *Love Is Blind* creator Chris Coelen, this has happened "multiple times" in past seasons, even if it wasn't shown onscreen. "Not often, but multiple times, and we've always dealt with it in exactly that same way," he says. "And they made the decision to stay and not reveal it to anybody else."

Alex Henderson and Ashley Carpenter on 'Love Is Blind'.

Courtesy of Netflix

However, the most notable case of cast members knowing each other before going on the show was season 5's Lydia Velez Gonzalez and Uche Okoroha. Unlike the other cases that didn't make it onto the show, their previous fling caused serious drama with the people they dated on the show and became a major story arc that season.

"Well, Uche and Lydia had obviously dated," Coelen says. "And to my knowledge, Alex and Priyanka had never dated. There wasn't a romantic interest. There wasn't a romantic relationship to my knowledge, based on what I know. So yeah, it's a very, very different situation."

The *Love Is Blind* creator says that all the producers are very open with the contestants about speaking up if they discover they already know the person on the other side of the pod wall during a date.

Priyanka Grandhi (third from right) with all the 'Love Is Blind' season 10 women.

Adam Rose/Netflix

"What we've said to the participants going in before they start dating is that we try to curate a group of people that we feel pretty sure don't know one another, that we feel pretty sure don't have a connection, because that speaks to the integrity of the experiment," Coelen says. "But please, if you do run across someone that you know, tell us. We will find out anyway, because there's no way to hide that."

Coelen doesn't remember if Alex and Priyanka alerted producers after they realized they already knew each other, but he knows it didn't impact the season in any way.

"It's happened a couple times in previous seasons, it's usually day one where someone comes to us and say, 'I know someone on the other side,'" Coelen says. "And we say, 'Are you interested in dating them? If you are, please leave and pursue that outside of here. If you're not interested in dating them, if you want to stay here, and if the other person wants to stay here, don't ruin the experience for one another and don't kind of spoil [it for others]. You won't date them during the pod experience.' So that's what we tell people, and we have to gauge whether they want to leave or whether they feel like they're not going to tell anyone."

'Love Is Blind' creator reveals exact day contestants get engaged in the pods (exclusive)

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According to Alex's fellow cast members, he followed the rules strictly and didn't tell any of the other guys about Priyanka during the pods.

"He never told us anything," Connor Spies tells EW. "He kept it very protective, let us date her, whoever dated her, never gave us any bias as well. There's one person out of the 16, we all found on day one something that we didn't like about them that was a dealbreaker, and his dealbreaker was 'somebody I already knew.' So honestly, he went about it the right way. And I think she did the same thing on her side too. It's honestly pretty respectful that [they] just went about it really professionally."

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Alex confirms that his priority was to make sure, he, Priyanka, and the rest of the season 10 cast got the full *Love Is Blind* adventure without any outside influence.

"I didn't want it to ruin anyone else's experience or even her experience," he adds. "I wanted her to have her ability to date everyone, and to have my ability as well."

*Love Is Blind* season 10 releases episodes 10-11 on Feb. 25, and the finale on March 4 on Netflix.

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Source: “EW TV”