After 10 days of bonding on “pod” dates on Netflix’sLove Is Blindand never having seen one another, Diamond Jack and Carlton Morton got engaged. When they finally were able to meet in person, the sparks continued to fly.
But then they arrived on vacation together in Mexico, and everything unraveled.
Shortly after they settled into their room, Carlton, who is 34 and works with kids who want to be models and actors, revealed something he hadn’t told Diamond before he popped the question: He had previously slept with both men and women.
Netflix
The conversation continued the next day and quickly spiraled, with accusations, name-calling, a drink in the face and even a diamond ring hurled into the pool. The engagement, their relationship and their time as part of the show’s “is love blind?” experiment was over.
Of course, life goes on, and nearly a year-and-a-half later (the show was filmed in October and November of 2018), Diamond and Carlton sat down with PEOPLE to discuss that fight, the death threats they’ve received since the first episodes were released and where they stand now.
PEOPLE: Your connection in the pod seemed so genuine. It was really beautiful. But right when you got to Mexico, all of a sudden the vibe was off. Carlton, do you feel like maybe you came in with a chip on your shoulder and assumption of how things were going to go?CARLTON MORTON:By the time we got to Mexico, my nerves were just shot… I got to Mexico and I had a conversation with producers that it had gone too long and I needed to tell her, but so much has happened. I’m feeling like, “Okay, I’m engaged to her now. Am I going to walk down the aisle without telling her? I’m at least talk to her before then.”
Were you nervous for those episodes to come out?CARLTON:Yeah.DIAMOND:We both were. At one point in time, I’m like maybe they might cut us out. Because we didn’t go do more things on the trip and the others were able to walk down the aisle. We didn’t make it to the altar, so I didn’t know if they were going to use us or not because our story didn’t end as a fairytale story.
It sounds like you guys have been getting some mixed reactions and some pretty awful ones—even death threats.DIAMOND:It’s very insane. I’ve been called so many names under the book now, calling me a disgusting human being. It’s crazy.CARLTON:Let’s be clear. The words that I said was the word that slipped out. I’m going to keep clearing that up. It was boxing her into a group of females. It was not a direct jab. Some people get that, some people don’t… I can’t change the way someone feels that they were addressed. You hear what I’m saying? So I just have to respect it.
What do you want people to know about who you are that maybe you feel it doesn’t show up on the show?CARLTON:I feel like if people cannot see that I’m a kindhearted person, they’ve already seen what they want to see in me… It’s evident in the types of messages that I’m getting. So there’s literally nothing that I can say to make them feel different. It is just one of those things that happened and I’m confident that God has a bigger lesson from this whole experience.DIAMOND:I feel like I put my heart out there. It pretty much shows what my intentions were coming into this whole experiment. And I don’t know if I would say anything to let people see besides that I’m not homophobic or I’m not biophobic. I respect that community, like I said before. It’s just that I feel like people shouldn’t lash out on other people when they don’t understand the community. It’s not that we’re ignorant. It’s not that we don’t care about you or it’s not that we hate you. It’s just the fact that we just have the lack of knowledge… I just didn’t know. I feel like people should not label me because I was curious about that community that I did not really know about.
So could this experience wind up the foundation for a pretty amazing friendship?CARLTON:At this point, whatever happens, happens. It would be great. But it takes time I think. I think we both have to still process the way we feel. We still have different views on the way things panned out and what was done wrong.DIAMOND:Exactly. That’s one thing that we do agree about on this show. One hundred percent what Carlton just said. We have a lot of growing, both of us, to do and I am willing to grow. I love growing but I feel like we can at least come now to a medium and be able to sit and now talk because this is a very touchy subject. And both of us still get emotional about it. Even though it happened over a year ago, it still feels like it was yesterday.
The first nine episodes ofLove Is Blindare streaming on Netflix now. The two-hour season finale will be released on Feb. 27.
source: people.com
