Aanu, 29

Instagram: @aanumusic

Location: Essex, England

Occupation: Singer

Backstory: Her four-year relationship ended due to infidelity.

Gets Engaged? No, but she has a flirtation with Patrick.

Amy, 33

Instagram: @amyjanevs

Location: Brecon, Wales

Occupation: Primary school teacher

Fun Fact: She set her brother up with his partner of eight years.

Gets Engaged? No.

Ashleigh, 30

Instagram: @ashleighberryy

Location: Surrey, England

Occupation: Cabin crew manager

Backstory: She was an Army Cadet growing up, and was nicknamed "Combat Barbie."

Gets Engaged? Yes, to Billy.

Bardha, 32

Instagram: @praddz

Location: London, England

Occupation: Sales and marketing director

Backstory: She emigrated to the UK from Kosovo as a child.

Gets Engaged? Yes, to Jed.

Billy, 35

Instagram: @billy_jervis_jnr

Location: Bangor, Northern Ireland

Occupation: Army physical trainer

Looking For: "A life partner who’ll accompany him on group dates with his married friends, enjoy a pint of Guinness, and build a family with him [and] his beloved dog Ollie."

Gets Engaged? Yes, to Ashleigh.

Charlie, 28

Instagram: @charlie_antony1

Location: Essex, England

Occupation: Electrical engineer

Backstory: "As a self-described former party boy, cheeky Charlie is known for being outspoken, but his personality hasn’t always led to success in romance."

Gets Engaged? No.

Chris, 33

Instagram: @cobyrne5

Location: Sussex, England

Occupation: Project manager

Looking For: "A family-oriented and funny woman who loves animals."

Gets Engaged? No.

Christine, 35

Instagram: @christineh12489

Location: Athlacca, Republic of Ireland

Occupation: HR operations lead

Backstory: A "very experienced bridesmaid" who has "a habit of falling for bad boys"

Gets Engaged? No.

Danielle, 33

Instagram: @imdaniellekelly

Location: Portsmouth, England

Occupation: Estate agent

Looking For: "Someone low-key, who's reserved and hardworking" and has ambition

Gets Engaged? No.

Holly, 30

Instagram: @hollyjkingdon

Location: London, England

Occupation: Private chef

Looking For: "Someone driven, emotionally available, and appreciative of her nurturing nature will get her attention."

Gets Engaged? No.

Demola, 30

Instagram: @demolaayilara14

Location: Essex, England

Occupation: Financial analyst

Backstory: "An old-school gentleman, Demola has been marriage-minded from a young age, even fantasizing about the details of his wedding as a boy."

Gets Engaged? No, but he has a flirtation with Katisha.

Jack, 33

Instagram: @jackrogers7

Location: London, England

Occupation: App creator

Backstory: After a health scare, "this triathlon runner has fully recovered, he’s realized life is extremely precious—and much better with a partner by your side."

Gets Engaged? No.

James, 36

Instagram: @jamesclarky_

Location: Skegness, England

Occupation: Real estate manager; DJ

Backstory: "As a father of two, James’s proudest achievement in life is raising his daughters—and he has his heart set on having more kids in the future."

Gets Engaged? No.

Javen, 28

Instagram: @javenspalmer

Location: Kent, England

Occupation: Health coach; former professional soccer player

Why He Joined LIB: "Javen believes he just 'attracts the wrong types of girls.' In the pods, however, he aims to break free of his usual type and build a 'genuine connection.'"

Gets Engaged? Yes, to Katisha.

Jed, 31

Instagram: @jedchouman

Location: Essex, England

Occupation: Configuration manager

Backstory: "The highlight of Jed’s’s week is Sunday roast dinners with his big Lebanese family. He’s a doting uncle to two nieces and can’t wait to one day be a 'girl dad.'"

Gets Engaged? Yes, to Bardha.

Jordan, 29

Instagram: @pugs.94

Location: Bristol, England

Occupation: Life engineer

Why He Joined LIB: "As he approaches 30, and after a year of being single, Jordan finally feels ready for a serious romantic partnership."

Gets Engaged? No.

Kal, 31

Instagram: @kaleemxpasha

Location: Wigan, England

Occupation: Gym owner

Why He Joined LIB: "If he wants to find a partner to go the distance, he’ll have to rethink his approach to dating: All seven of his previous relationships have ended before the 12-month mark."

Gets Engaged? Yes, to Sarover.

Katisha, 31

Instagram: @katkinson1

Location: Dumfries, Scotland

Occupation: Nanny and makeup artist

Why She Joined LIB: "To branch out of her small hometown to connect with the 'right type of men' who are seeking long-term commitment and love."

Gets Engaged? Yes, to Javen.

Kieran, 28

Instagram: @kieranhdarby

Location: London, England

Occupation: Gaming entrepreneur

Backstory: "Kieran is a member of Mensa and has even been featured on Forbes 30 Under 30 list, so he’s no stranger to success. Let’s just see if he finds it in romance."

Gets Engaged? Yes, to Megan.

Laurie, 37

Instagram: @llauriemariee

Location: London, England

Occupation: Interior stylist

Looking For: "A serious guy, who embraces her Celtic and Caribbean roots."

Gets Engaged? No.

Loll, 31

Instagram: @lollsturgess

Location: Bedfordshire, England

Occupation: Account manager, sales

Why She Joined LIB: "Though her natural confidence attracts all kinds of people, she has a habit of letting the wrong guys into her heart."

Gets Engaged? No.

Megan, 28

Instagram: @meganjupp

Location: London, England

Occupation: Dancer/fitness instructor

Looking For: "A man who supports her career and shares her desire to start a family and quick-witted sense of humor."

Gets Engaged? Yes, to Kieran.

Patrick, 33

Instagram: @projectorpatrick

Location: London, England

Occupation: Human Design coach

Why He Joined LIB: "Partick ended his longest relationship because he didn’t know himself well enough, but after putting in the work and feeling secure about himself once again, love is what he’s after."

Gets Engaged? No, but he has a flirtation with Aanu.

Ross B, 32

Instagram: @rossbfrd

Location: Dunstable, England

Occupation: Builder

Backstory: "'A movie kind of love'" with "a partner who will be his best friend for life, long after the credits stop rolling"

Gets Engaged? No.

Ross M, 30

Instagram: @rossmillington1

Location: Cheshire, England

Occupation: Barber shop owner

Why He Joined LIB: "After a year of being single, he’s ready to give it another go and hopes to meet someone with whom he can be completely himself."

Gets Engaged? No.

Sarover, 29

Instagram: @saroveraujla

Location: Buckinghamshire, England

Occupation: Medical company owner; former competitive kickboxer

Why She Joined LIB: "Romance has been calling, but online dating and being set up by relatives haven’t been successful."

Gets Engaged? Yes, to Kal.

Sophie, 28

Instagram: @slw.3

Location: Manchester, England

Occupation: Senior commercial manager

Biggest Turn-On: "A guy who can 'stand up for himself' and doesn’t let her walk all over him."

Gets Engaged? No, but she has a flirtation with Kieran.

Tara, 33

Instagram: @tarakmason

Location: Wicklow, Republic of Ireland

Occupation: Cafe owner

Looking For: Someone who's "genuinely interested in all aspects of her life, including her favorite pastimes: running, night diving, and walking her Great Dane."

Gets Engaged?: No.

Tom, 35

Instagram: @tom.jackson88

Location: London, England

Occupation: Retired pub landlord

Looking For: "Having grown up in a large family with foster siblings, Tom hopes to get married and foster some kids of his own with a partner one day."

Gets Engaged? No.

Yolanda, 26

Instagram: @simply_yolandita

Location: Hampshire, England

Occupation: Specialist occupational therapist

Why She Joined LIB: "As an adrenaline junkie who enjoys sky diving and bungee jumping, she’s had plenty of experience taking big leaps of faith."

Gets Engaged? No.

Like its international counterpart, the surprising sincerity of Are You My First? belies its eyebrow-raising title (and Iain Stirling-style voiceover narration). Especially after a summer of intense reality drama, the cast of this series feels like a breath of fresh air, with a handful of ready-made TV personalities (and alums from other shows) sprinkled in. Leave your expectations at the door; there are way fewer corny challenges and way more genuine conversations (and sex-education trivia) than you'd expect.

To build out its roster of virgins, Hulu found hopeful singles including L.A. models, Florida entrepreneurs, a pageant queen, a romantasy author, and a handful of Mormons. Below, read on to meet the cast of Are You My First?.

Andrew

Instagram: @andrewmarino_

Age: 25

Hometown: Salt Lake City, UT

Occupation: Sales consultant; entrepreneur

Why They're Waiting: "Saving it for the one who will 'be his forever.'"

Brooklyn

Instagram: @brooklynhbenson

Age: 24

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Occupation: Model; actress; dance instructor

Why They're Waiting: "Believes the right one is 'worth the wait.'"

Carissa

Instagram: @carissaestellee

Age: 27

Hometown: Long Beach, CA

Occupation: Social media manager

Why They're Waiting: "Holding space for 'the one who's truly right.'"

Deya

Instagram: @deyabazan

Age: 28

Hometown: Fort Lauderdale, FL

Occupation: Small business owner

Why They're Waiting: "Looking to create a lasting 'storybook love' with the right one."

Farha

Instagram: @farhakhalidi

Age: 25

Hometown: Miami, FL

Occupation: Writer; content creator

Fun Fact: She has 1.7 million TikTok followers.

Why They're Waiting: "'Late bloomer' who figures she might as well wait for true love."

Godwin

Instagram: @godwin__asamoah

Age: 27

Hometown: Ghana; Edison, NJ

Occupation: Actor; model

Fun Fact: He was in Rihanna's Savage X Fenty Vol. 3 fashion show.

Why They're Waiting: "Still looking because he's 'holding out for his queen.'"

Hakeem

Instagram: @hakeem_kiser

Age: 27

Hometown: Atlanta, GA

Occupation: Voiceover artist; poet

Why They're Waiting: "Approaches with caution because he 'knows the risk.'"

Jade

Instagram: @jadee_t

Age: 28

Hometown: New Orleans, LA

Occupation: Marketing specialist

Fun Fact: She's a former NFL cheerleader and Miss New Orleans USA '22 and '23.

Why They're Waiting: "She's 'never been in a serious relationship'—but never say never."

Jake

Instagram: @jakerohrs

Age: 32

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Occupation: Caregiver

Why They're Waiting: "Waiting for marriage because his 'faith calls him' to."

Katya

Instagram: @katyaferrer

Age: 28

Hometown: Orange County, CA / New York, NY

Occupation: Theater artist

Why They're Waiting: "Holding out because everything is about sex except sex. 'Sex is about power.'"

Krash

Instagram: @krashpavic

Age: 24

Hometown: Miami, FL

Occupation: Social media manager

Why They're Waiting: "'Strict upbringing' taught him to wait for the right one."

Layne

Instagram: @layne.gwartney

Age: 24

Hometown: Hammon, OK

Occupation: Commercial pilot

Why They're Waiting: "He's never had a 'serious girlfriend'...so far."

Madi

Instagram: @madikolodgie

Age: 28

Hometown: Houston, TX / Austin, TX

Occupation: Influencer marketing manager

Why They're Waiting: "Her fear of intimacy is making her wait 'to meet her true love.'"

Michael

Instagram: @michaelaaronfractor

Age: 26

Hometown: Austin, TX

Occupation: Tour guide; stand-up comedian

Fun Fact: He was previously on the Netflix reality show Twentysomethings: Austin.

Why They're Waiting: "Needs to work through his 'fear of intimacy' first."

Mike

Instagram: @mikeyplaneta

Age: 34

Hometown: San Diego, CA

Occupation: Gym owner / entrepreneur

Fun Fact: He was a contestant on season 17 (Katie Thurston's season) of The Bachelorette.

Why They're Waiting: "His faith called to say he needs to 'wait until marriage.'"

Noah

Instagram: @noahtokjenson

Age: 25

Hometown: San Clemente, CA

Occupation: Business owner

Why They're Waiting: "'Waiting' to walk down the aisle before hopping into bed."

Rachael

Instagram: @rachael_staudt

Age: 30

Hometown: Tampa, FL

Occupation: Cocktail waitress; romantasy author

Why They're Waiting: "Navigating a 'health challenge' that impacts physical intimacy."

Sara

Instagram: @sarabrito29

Age: 28

Hometown: San Diego, CA

Occupation: Student

Why They're Waiting: "Holding out for love after she 'prioritized her studies growing up.'"

Spencer

Instagram: @spencer.johnsons

Hometown: Vancouver Island, Canada / Boise, Idaho

Occupation: Residential solar salesman

Why They're Waiting: "Looking for someone who makes his first 'fulfilling and meaningful.'"

Ty

Instagram: @ty.cannon

Age: 25

Hometown: Provo, Utah

Occupation: Software engineer / web developer

Fun Fact: He's Mormon and graduated from BYU.

Why They're Waiting: "He's still waiting for the 'right one' and he's not afraid to admit it."

Vivek

Instagram: @vivek__sun

Age: 23

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Occupation: Financial accountant; model

Why They're Waiting: "Wants to share that moment with 'someone he truly trusts.'"

One of the film’s breakout stars, singer-songwriter Aiyana-Lee, got her start in the industry in the exact same way. “That was me in every label,” the 24-year-old musician says. “I was sitting outside, pretending I had a meeting, waiting for the CEO, literally with a guitar and a karaoke mic. It made the film feel hyper-realistic.”

Now, the British-American artist (whose full name is Aiyana-Lee Anderson) has traded her makeshift impromptu stage for the theatrical spotlight. In Highest 2 Lowest, she plays Sula Janie Zimmie, another aspiring superstar who appears in King’s life as he contemplates the next stage of his career. Sula’s sanctioned audition in the film’s momentous ending scene leaves King—and the audience—moved by the singer’s undeniable talent.

Aiyana-Lee’s collaboration with Spike Lee began when she caught his attention on Instagram. Ahead of the A24/Apple film’s August 15 theatrical release, the singer tells Marie Claire that she was in “complete disbelief” when the auteur filmmaker slid into her DMs. “I had to check it a few times to make sure I wasn't tripping. My jaw dropped to the floor. I got up out of my bed. It was like 6:00 in the morning, and I woke my mom up and said, 'Girl, I think Spike Lee just DMed me.'”

Her title track on the film’s soundtrack is a joyous, gospel-tinged ode to resilience, making for the perfect coda to the genre-bending neo-noir about art versus commerce in a creative industry. While writing the song, the singer connected with the film’s “hyper-realistic” portrayal of the cutthroat music industry as it tries to adapt to the changing times. From moving to the U.S. at the age of 15 with just a karaoke mic and a dream, to building an online platform with over a million followers, Aiyana-Lee hopes her breakout moment can lend to the song’s message: “You can go from being at your lowest to reaching your highest potential.”

With Highest 2 Lowest in select theaters and the soundtrack out now, Aiyana-Lee chats with Marie Claire about sharing her first-ever movie scene with Washington, working closely with Lee, and how her family is integral to her music.

MC: Had you already read the film’s script when you were working on the title track? Did you know that it would be this triumphant final scene as you wrote the lyrics?

AL: For sure. It's funny because we probably wrote 10 songs before we got to this one. We have a folder full of Spike Lee joints on the hard drive, but it was such a great collaboration. Spike was super involved. He would call me every single day, and we would go back and forth on how we can get the best vibe for that moment, because it is such a big moment in the movie. He really knew what he wanted people to feel when they saw it and heard it, so we definitely went through a process of making sure that the energy fit for that moment. Everything that the characters go through and the vibe of the entire movie inspired having that 'crescendo,' as Spike would call it, moment at the end of the film with this song.

MC: What was it like when you got onto set to film the scene with Denzel Washington?

AL: I mean, it's Denzel! You know what I'm saying? I was super nervous beforehand, because you never know what you're going to get, and you're always afraid to meet your idols. But in this case, Denzel surpassed my expectations—firstly as a human being, let alone an actor. He was so welcoming, such a joy to be on set with, so electrifying to watch him in his element. I've never seen anything like it. [He] and Spike really made me feel so comfortable and so seen. They really encouraged me and believed in me, and took a chance.

MC: You share a lot of similarities with your character Sula, both musically and in your career trajectory. What was it like balancing playing someone so similar to you in real life?

AL: Spike has such a great mind and really knows what's going to fit for who and how it's going to work. In this scene, I felt like I had to be as authentic as I possibly could and stay as true to myself as I could, because I'd been through a similar situation, if not the exact same situation that this scene portrays in my own life—to the point where I was like, 'I'm having a bit of déjà vu.' It felt so close to home, and it was a joy to be able to bring myself to this character.

MC: You have a lot of songs like “My idols lied to me” and “Table for Three” that sound like they’re meant to be on a film soundtrack. What draws you to that style of music?

AL: I've always been drawn to things that feel cinematic and theatrical because I'm a very big persona in my own life, and I like to reflect it in my music. I definitely feel a comfort in that raw storytelling element. Storytelling in every form has always been the goal, whether it's acting or writing books or writing music.

MC: Your mother, Daciana-Nicole Anderson, is your creative partner and co-writer on the title track. What's it like working with her and having your family be involved in your singing career?

AL: It's amazing. She taught me everything I know when it comes to writing. We collab so much and so often, and I feel like we're literally the same person in two different fonts, so it's so easy to work together. Even on this song, I really was like, 'I can't play the piano, bro. Can you help me come up with some chords just for writing purposes?' She's been able to co-write so many songs with me on my own projects as well, and protect me from a lot of the crazy stuff that goes down in the industry. [She’s been] a guiding light for me, and she inspires me to push myself, not settle for things that are mediocre, and surpass what's accepted to pursue something that creates legacy. Without her, I don't know who I would've turned out to be.

MC: Who were your musical inspirations growing up?

AL: Because I grew up around my mom—who has always been a songwriter and an incredible one—I got to experience all kinds of music, from The Temptations with my uncle being David Ruffin to Christina Aguilera, who was off the charts, going crazy. I love Whitney [Houston], Mariah [Carey], Céline [Dion]. I've always enjoyed all the classic female vocalists. I love Michael Jackson. To me, he's the best artist in the world, the greatest that will ever be and has ever been. I think growing up around different types of music has helped me craft and pave my own way.

MC: You often discuss your mental health and your come-up as a musician on social media. What makes you want to be so open about your personal life rather than creating a separation?

AL: To me, it's one and the same. I wanted to be almost the quote, 'Be the change you wish to see in the world.' I saw so many different artists blow up, but I never really understood the story or got to see the step-by-step. You can compare yourself to so many different people online, but then you degrade yourself to a degree, thinking that they don't go through the same struggles you do. I never wanted to be that. I wanted people to see the grit of it all and be part of that daily journey and struggle, because if someone can see my journey and be inspired and think, ‘You know what, maybe I can do it as well,’ then that's a job done.

MC: What do you hope that both the general audience and aspiring musicians feel after they watch your final scene?

AL: I hope the takeaway is that you can go from being at your lowest to reaching your highest potential. If you stick through the times when you're broke, the times when you have nothing, and still see that bigger picture and vision despite whoever doubts you and tries to make you feel smaller than what you are. That's really what the song is saying as well: If a person can go through all that and still make it on top, then maybe I can do it as well.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

During its run, Cruel Summer became a word-of-mouth hit and Freeform's most-watched series debut at the time. Despite fan pleas for a continuation after the finale's jaw-dropping cliffhanger, the Jessica Biel-produced series became an anthology and released a second season with an all-new cast and showrunner. Though the series was canceled in late 2023, it turns out that Kate Wallis's story may not be over yet. Below, read on for everything we know about a possible Cruel Summer season 3, including where the cult-loved drama could go next.

Has 'Cruel Summer' been renewed for season 3?

Though the thriller series was canceled after its second installment (which was not as popular as the debut season), it seems as though summer's not over quite yet. In a major surprise, Variety reported in August 2025—two years after the show went off the air—that a season 3 of Cruel Summer is in development at Hulu and Freeform. What's even more exciting? Olivia Holt is reprising her role—meaning, the series will at least somewhat continue its season 1 storyline.

After the news broke, Holt, who is coming onto season 3 as an executive producer, took to Instagram to share a screenshot of the report and express her excitement. "kate wallis, it’s good to be you again," she wrote in the caption.

Joining Holt behind the scenes of the production are showrunners Cori Uchida and Adam Lash, and returning executive producers Jessica Biel and Michelle Purple. Bert V. Royal, who created the series but left after filming the pilot due to "creative differences," is not involved.

So, queue your favorite '90s banger and throw on some butterfly clips or a choker because it's happening!

When will 'Cruel Summer' season 3 come out?

It's unclear when Cruel Summer season 3 will premiere, but it will likely be a while. With the new season still in early development, the team is probably still writing the next chapter in Kate Wallis's story. When the show moves into production, it may be a relatively quick turnaround. (Season 1 was filmed in early 2020 before it premiered in summer 2021. Meanwhile, season 2 was ordered amid season 1's run, shot in 2022, and aired in 2023.) We're crossing our fingers that we'll be back in Skylin, Texas by late 2026 or early 2027.

What will 'Cruel Summer' season 3 be about?

All we know about Cruel Summer season 3 is that Olivia Holt is reprising her role as Kate Wallis. It's unconfirmed whether the upcoming episodes will immediately follow the events of season 1 or if there will be a time jump.

As fans will likely remember, season 1 famously ended with a jaw-dropping twist that revealed that while Jeanette didn't see Kate when she was held captive by Martin (Blake Lee), as she alleged, she did hear her. The 1994 timeline shows Jeanette breaking into Martin's home, as she had a habit of doing, and hearing Kate yelling for help from the basement. While she nearly put her hand on the locked basement door to help her out, she ultimately decided against it. We then understand just how calculated her following choices were, and how much she lied upon Kate's return.

Still, Jeanette was able to get away with everything and have the court case thrown out, as it also came to light that it was Mallory (Harley Quinn Smith) who saw Kate, unbeknownst to her at the time, and all the girls apologized to one another.

Season 3 could see Jeanette's truth somehow coming out (perhaps Kate can't let the confusing holes in the case go!), and the ramifications of it. Alternatively, Jeanette could make another sinister decision that goes awry, causing the case to return to her.

However, considering all parties involved in the original case were trying to move on, it's possible that the show could go a different direction, focusing on what's next for Kate. Perhaps she becomes obsessed with finding out if Martin had any other victims, or she becomes somewhat of an armchair detective, hoping to help other girls. Or, maybe now she's in college and something happens on her campus. There are endless possibilities, but regardless, we're looking forward to be back with the OG queen bee of Skylin.

Which cast members will return for 'Cruel Summer' season 3?

The only confirmed name in season 3 is Holt. It could be a while before any news regarding who else from the debut season might return, or whether the show will tell a new story with a new ensemble.

If the show continues the drama between Kate and Jeanette, Chiara Aurelia would likely return. Since Cruel Summer, she's made a name for herself on and off Broadway, where she led the buzzy play Dilaria and took over for Sadie Sink in the main role of John Proctor Is the Villain when the Stranger Things star's run ended. However, John Proctor Is the Villain closes in early September, and Aurelia's availability opens up.

Other characters who might be back include Mallory (played by Harley Quinn Smith), since she and Kate began dating at the end of season 1, and Kate's family, including her typical Southern belle mother Joy (Andrea Anders), her stepfather Rod (Ben Cain), and her sister Ashley (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut). As fans may recall, Kate shot and killed Martin (Blake Lee) before she escaped, so he likely won't be back unless there are additional flashbacks or she delves more into his past.

With the show's return still in early development, we'll have to stay patient—but we'll be sure to update this story as more information becomes available. We can't wait for next summer!

What happens between Billy and Ashleigh on 'Love is Blind: UK' season 2?

For 35-year-old Army veteran and physical trainer Billy, it’s an instant connection with Ashleigh, a 30-year-old cabin crew flight attendant and former Army Cadet. Their shared military training is grounds for the immediate spark, but the more they talk in the pods, the stronger their bond grows. They’re able to be vulnerable with each other; Ashleigh reveals she hasn’t dated in over four years after her previous relationship “knocked who she was,” while Billy admits that he got divorced five years ago and is looking to find his forever person.

The banter between Billy and Ashleigh only increases as time goes on—but before things get too far, Billy expresses some hesitation about her career, knowing that it will require her to be away from home for long periods. When they discuss this potential hiccup, Ashleigh reassures him by saying she’s open to switching to a more traditional 9-to-5 if and when they have a family. This is enough to assuage his fears, which stem from a previous relationship with a flight attendant in which he and his partner were essentially living separate lives.

As their relationship grows, Ashleigh gifts Billy a thimble, a souvenir she collects from every travel destination. It’s a symbol of the adventure they’re going on together, and it makes Billy so emotional that he tells her he loves her—the first time he’s said the words since he was married. She says it back, and soon they’re the first couple to get engaged in the new season.

At the in-person reveal, they have immediate chemistry and adorably twirl each other around, taking in their partner for the first time. Ashleigh even jokingly tells the confessional camera that “Billy’s a good kisser” and jumps on a couch like a giddy teenager after their first meeting, in awe of her happiness.

Billy and Ashleigh’s bliss continues when they travel to Cyprus, unable to keep their hands off each other while still deepening their emotional connection. “You’re my type every day of the week and twice on Sundays,” Billy tells her after they both compliment each other’s physiques. Things are trending in an upward direction even after they meet up with the other couples, with no signs of jealousy or nefarious behavior at this time. For now, they seem to be this installment’s version of Love Is Blind season 1 standouts Lauren and Cameron, or season 4 fan-favorites Tiffany and Brett—couples who smoothly sail to the altar and beyond.

Are Billy and Ashleigh from 'Love Is Blind: UK’ season 2 still together?

There isn’t much to glean from their social profiles. (Netflix typically doesn’t allow the cast to follow each other or share any photos on their pages to minimize spoilers.) So while Billy and Ashleigh don’t currently engage with each other online, that may not necessarily be an indicator of their relationship status. We’ll likely know more as the season unfolds, and we’ll stay on the lookout for any news regarding these lovebirds.

For now, Kieran and Megan seem to be the right pairing: the couple has easy banter, sexual chemistry, and emotional vulnerability with each other. But could drama in the pods haunt them going forward? Here, we break down Kieran and Megan’s relationship in Love Is Blind: UK season 2, what caused Sophie to walk away from Kieran—and the show—and whether Kieran and Megan might still be together.

What happens between Kieran and Megan on 'Love is Blind: UK' season 2?

For a while, 28-year-old dancer and fitness instructor Megan wasn’t Kieran’s only connection. The 28-year-old gaming entrepreneur was also balancing a relationship with Sophie, a 28-year-old senior commercial manager. But Kieran was struggling to break through Sophie’s icy exterior—walls that she admits she puts up because of a falling out with her mother after her parents divorced.

By comparison, Kieran’s relationship with Megan is easier. They laugh over their shared interest in dancing and that they’re both naturally sweaty people; following their first date, she admits in a confessional that there’s an immediate spark and tells Aanu in the women’s living quarters that he’s her top choice. Kieran, meanwhile, says that he can feel the sexual tension between them through the wall. But even more than some of their superficial attraction, Megan is vulnerable with him about her parents’s divorce and her lack of relationship with her birth father, whereas Sophie’s inability to open up and show her true self halts the growth of her relationship with Kieran.

Feeling like his connection with Megan is stronger, Kieran gifts her a sentimental Japanese ornament called an omamori, which signifies good fortune. He sprays the packaging with his aftershave, a flirty detail to give her a sniff of what he’s like in real life. It’s a big step forward with Megan, and a clear signal to Sophie that she isn’t on the same playing field as Kieran’s other connection. She confronts him about the gift, which hurts a bit extra after they bonded over their interest in traveling to Japan. She feels disrespected by his gesture and breaks up with Kieran, leaving the experiment altogether.

While he does apologize to Sophie, Kieran doesn’t skip a beat. Megan asks him about it on their next date, as she felt she was unknowingly put in the middle, and he is transparent about his desire to only continue the dating show with her. By the end of the third episode, Kieran proposes to Megan through the wall. She says yes, and there are palpable sparks when they meet at the reveal. Adorably, he repeatedly calls himself a “lucky boy” to have found love with Megan.

Their blissful union continues in Cyprus. Being a gentleman, Kieran doesn’t reveal anything about their physical connection behind closed doors, but he does say they cuddled all night (whether that’s a euphemism or not, we’ll never know). For now, it seems like they’ll remain in paradise, but when Sophie inevitably returns for a future cast reunion, we’ll be interested to see how that shakes things up.

Are Kieran and Megan from 'Love is Blind: UK' season 2 still together?

At this time, all the contestants are keeping mum about the show’s outcome—Kieran and Megan included. This is typical for Netflix reality stars to avoid spoilers, but we’ll be keeping a close eye on their social media interactions once the full season has premiered.

She’s done worrying about that.

On the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast “Nice Talk”, Koshy opens up to editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike about her acting career and the imposter syndrome she battled when transitioning from social media sensation to film and TV star.

“I can't depend on somebody else's perception to be my definition of myself,” Koshy says. “And at one point, I allowed that perception to be my definition, and that perception was ‘just an influencer.’”

Now 29, Koshy feels “the world is catching up” to the fact that she’s an actor, not a YouTuber—a platform she stopped posting to four years ago, leaving 16.7 million followers to process her pivot. While audiences have been getting to know her in a new light, she’s had to adjust her own view of herself, too.

“Although I've been acting since 2015, since Tyler Perry gave me my first role in Boo! A Madea Halloween. Although I've been acting consistently since, and I've had movies like Family Affair and Work It—which was my utmost pride and joy with Sabrina Carpenter in a dance movie, like, that was summer camp for me—in my soul, there is a neutral feeling in my gut when I say ‘I'm an actor.’ And I feel so proud to be able to own that now fully.”

That confidence came slowly, and not without some stinging moments.

“I totally had imposter syndrome in the very beginning, and that was due to some actors being like, ‘You're only here for marketing reasons,’” Koshy says. “I had, unfortunately, someone that I was in a deep relationship with tell me that ‘you're only getting hired because you're ethnically ambiguous. You're getting hired because you're a brown woman and Cardi B is working, so you kind of look like her, and you're gonna work, too’ … It just hurt, and it makes you feel like, oh, my value’s only in what I look like.”

Koshy says she no longer gives comments like that “power.” Time, experience, and relentless auditioning helped her build self-assurance.

“I think auditioning, hearing ‘no, no, no, no, no, no’ and just hearing instead, ‘go, go, go, go, keep going, girl’ …. and you just keep going,” she explains. “You do the jobs that excite you, and then you meet people that are excited by you. And then you continue to foster a creative community that taps into each other.”

For more from Koshy—including how she started her content creation career as a teen, why she decided to quit YouTube, and why she has an email account for a fake assistant—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

The new physical competition show recruits 25 former athletes, who walked away from their careers and are looking for another chance at glory and security. Over several days, the contestants compete in strength, agility, perseverance, and stamina games that range from climbing an icy mountain to the ultimate monkey bars challenge. The last one left standing will walk away with a grand prize of 30 million yen (about $204,000) to support their families and the next stage of their careers.

For the must-watch reality series, producers gathered a range of athletes, including sports legends wanting to prove they still have it, underdogs hoping to amplify their lesser-known sports, and players whose careers were cut short. Below, read on to meet the athletic phenoms in the cast of Final Draft.

Akira Kaji

Akira Kaji, 44, is a former professional soccer player and member of Japan's national soccer team.

Atsushi Arai

Atsushi Arai, 31, was a member of Japan's national water polo team for 10 years. He competed in both the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics, and later won a gold medal at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou. He says that he wants "more people to know how strong water polo players actually are."

Final Draft is his second appearance on Netflix; he was previously a contestant on the Japanese dating show Offline Love.

Instagram: @a2desu

Eri Tosaka

Eri Tosaka, 31, is an Olympic wrestler who won a gold medal at the 2016 Rio Games. She retired from wrestling in 2022, a year after welcoming her first child, a baby boy. On Final Draft, she says that she wanted to show how strong both wrestlers and mothers could be.

Instagram: @eri_tosaka

Goson Sakai

Goson Sakai, 29, is a former professional soccer player of Japanese and German heritage. He comes from an athletic family, as his brothers Gōtoku and Noriyoshi Sakai are also footballers. He now owns a coffee shop and makes a third of what he used to as a soccer player.

Instagram: @__g.sakai__

Hozumi Hasegawa

Hozumi Hasegawa, 44, is a former champion boxer who has won world titles in three different weight classes. He retired in 2016 with a 36-5 record, and he received the MVP award from the Japan Boxing Commission four times. The standout competitor is idolized by some of his younger competitors in Final Draft.

Instagram: @hozumi_hasegawa

Kaho Mita

Kaho Mita, 28, is a former gymnast and trampoline athlete who now competes in bodybuilding.

Instagram: @kaho_fitness

Katsuma Yonemura

Katsuma Yonemura, 29, is a former professional judo athlete who's currently working as a barber. He says on Final Draft that he's saving money to open his own barber shop.

Kazuhiro Goya

Kazuhiro Goya, 32, is a former professional rugby sevens player who represented Japan on the national team at the Rio and Tokyo Olympics. He says on Final Draft that he wants to use the prize money to buy a bigger house for his family, which consists of him, his wife, and his young daughter. In March 2025, he and his wife welcomed their second child, a baby boy.

Instagram: @kazuhiro_goya

Kenta Tsukamoto

Kenta Tsukamoto, 29, is a competitive bodybuilder and model who runs his own YouTube channel. He played rugby as a kid until he had to retire due to a brain condition. In his Final Draft intro, he mentions that he's probably the most "hungry" for the prize money, since you can't earn a lot from bodybuilding in Japan. He also says that his goal is to open a gym.

Instagram: @tsukaken_fitness

Koji Tokuda

Koji Tokuda, 36, is a former American football player (who was a former teammate of fellow competitor Kurihara) and a former comedian. He made his TV debut as a professional comedian and member of the comedy duo Brilliant in 2016. Now, he says that he joined Final Draft to show he hasn't lost his athletic abilities.

Kouzi

Kouzi, full name Koji Tanaka, stands out as one of the only active athletes competing in Final Draft, according to the show. The martial arts fighter has competed in kickboxing, MMA, and exhibition boxing throughout his career.

Instagram: @1_kouzi

Masato Yano

Masato Yano, 31, is an athlete and YouTuber who does "street workout," a gymnastics/calisthenics hybrid that is popular on Instagram and TikTok.

Instagram: @masato_antigravity

Masayuki Shimokawa

Masayuki Shimokawa, 36, is a former professional athlete who played kabaddi, a contact team sport that originated in India. He says on Final Draft, "I'm here to show everyone just how incredible the sport truly is."

Instagram: @shimo_kabaddi

Naoto Hayasaka

Naoto Hayasaka, 29, is a former member of Japan's national gymnastics team who won gold at the 2015 World Championships in Glasgow.

Instagram: @naoto.hayasaka

Ryosuke Miyaguni

Ryosuke Miyaguni, 33, is a former pro baseball player who now works in real estate after retiring in 2023. He also runs a TikTok with other baseball players.

Instagram: ryosuke.miyaguni

Ryudai Onikura

Ryudai Onikura, 30, is a former amateur boxer who retired after losing the final match in the qualifiers for the Tokyo Olympics. In 2021, he began acting. He's since appeared in over a dozen Japanese dramas, including Teppachi! and The Diamond Sleeping in the Sea.

Instagram: @onikura_ryudai

Sari Baba

Sari Baba, 31, is a former professional tennis player who began training at just 5-years-old.

Takashi Kurihara

Takashi Kurihara, 37, is a former member of Japan's national American football team, who also played at both the collegiate (Hosei University Tomahawks) and professional (Japan's X League) levels. In 2015, he was considered "the Japanese man who was the closest to becoming an NFL player," according to The Japan Times. (To this day, no Japan-born man has played in the NFL).

He now works as a high-performance fitness coach and lives between Japan and Hawaii.

Instagram: @iam_tk_81

Tomoe Tamura

Tomoe Tamura, 35, is a former member of Japan's national ultimate frisbee team, who joined Final Draft to show that people shouldn't underestimate the sport. She now works as a personal trainer.

Instagram: @t0m0e_tamura_13

Yoshio Itoi

Yoshio Itoi, 44, is a legendary baseball player and athlete known by his nickname "Superhuman." He was a nine-time all-star in the Nippon Professional Baseball League, where he played as a pitcher for 18 years before retiring in 2022. He also won multiple accolades, including receiving the Best Nine Award—awarded to the top player at each position—five times.

Instagram: @itoiyoshio_7

Yoshito Okubo

Yoshito Okubo, 42, is a famous former member of Japan's national soccer team. He's known as the first J-League player to lead the league in scoring for three consecutive seasons, per Netflix. To prepare for Final Draft, he resumed intense training and lost 12.4 kg (27 lb), which he described as "harder than anything" he did during his professional career.

Instagram: @yoshito13

Yosuke Kashiwagi

Yosuke Kashiwagi, 37, is a former member of Japan's national soccer team, who retired in 2023 after 13 years as a pro.

Yu Kato

Yu Kato, 29, is a former professional basketball player who played in Japan's Women's Baseball League. She's passionate about inspiring young girls to play baseball, and she joined Final Match determined to prove that she could beat the male players. Since her retirement, she has started a YouTube channel for her music.

Instagram: @y_k_009

Yujo Kitagata

Yujo Kitagata, 31, is a former baseball player on a redemption arc. While he was drafted as the first pick overall, he was eventually released from the major league twice without ever pitching. He says that if he wins, he wants to use the money to "provide better training for young athletes and ultimately make these kids' dreams come true."

Yuya Shozui

Yuya Shozui, 29, is a former professional baseball player who says on the show that he was "forced to retire" before he could prove himself. After he was cut from his former team in 2023, he worked as a part-time mover to support his family.

Instagram: @yuya.shozui

What happens between Kal and Sarover on 'Love is Blind: UK' season 2?

Kal, a 31-year-old co-owner of a gym in Wigan, England, immediately connects with Sarover, a 29-year-old co-owner of a medical company from outside of London. He initially compliments her “posh” accent, and they quickly find many similarities in their upbringings. As it turns out, Kal and Sarover are both children of divorce who value family, gym rats, entrepreneurs, and share a similar heritage, since she is of Indian descent and he is half-Pakistani.

But that last detail isn’t as much of a slam dunk as it may seem on paper, given India and Pakistan’s fraught history. (The neighboring countries that were formerly one nation under colonial British rule have been at odds with each other since their 1947 Partition.) “I’ve met Indian girls before who haven’t been able to date Pakistani guys, and vice versa,” Kal says of the stakes of his relationship with Sarover to some of the other men in the living quarters. Luckily, Kal and Sarover discuss this potential complication head-on and agree that this isn’t a dealbreaker for them and likely wouldn’t be one for their families either, who ultimately value their happiness above all.

Kal and Sarover were each other’s number one connections from the start, and they get engaged in the second episode of the new season. “I know she’s the one because of the excitement I feel before I’m getting to speak to her,” Kal says in the confessional before popping the question. In the pods, he affectionately calls her “Princess”—which he repeats when he sees her for the first time—and cites their similarities and his gratitude for finding her during this process. “Will you join me on this insanely crazy, beautiful rollercoaster we call life and marry me?” he asks. Giddy on the other side of the wall, she responds, “100 percent, no doubt, I’m so ready for our next chapter together.”

During their in-person reveal in episode 3, it’s clear that they immediately find each other attractive. Kal wears a sherwani, a traditional South Asian wedding garb, for the occasion, once again highlighting the beauty of their shared background. As he says, Sarover is a welcome departure from his typical type of blonde white girls—but this quickly becomes something that Sarover latches onto and feels insecure about once they are in person.

When the engaged couples meet and mingle in Cyprus in the fourth episode, Kal tells the cameras that Bardha embodies the type of woman he’d normally chase IRL before the show. He hopes that Sarover won’t feel insecure about it, but she later admits to Ashleigh that she’s in her head about his potential attraction to others on the show. Ashleigh encourages her to let her guard down and be open about her struggles—advice that we hope Sarover will take when the series returns with the next batch of episodes on August 20.

Are Kal and Sarover from 'Love is Blind: UK' season 2 still together?

Netflix keeps its reality stars under a tight contract, so there’s very little tea to find on the couple’s Instagram pages at the moment. At this time, the couple doesn’t follow each other on social media and haven’t posted any photos of themselves or their time on the show (aside from the heavily edited cast announcement photos). For now, we won’t read into any of that until after the season finale and reunion.

It seems that fans of reality dating series have reached their maximum limits for toxic drama, after a year where producers couldn’t find the love. For as many Reddit posts as there are tracking reality stars’s every update and examining who’s mad at who, there are tweets and threads about how insert-upcoming-show is coming to claim whatever peace fans have found while taking a reality TV break. It’s enough to make you wonder whether fans are close to changing the channel altogether.

Months before it debuted, Perfect Match season 3 promised a love story. The series—which produced one failed engagement and zero long-term relationships in its first two seasons—spoiled itself during Love Is Blind’s season 8 reunion in March 2025, when Amber “A.D.” Smith and Ollie Sutherland announced their engagement after meeting while filming the dating competition. However, fans who tuned in expecting to see a meet-cute and honeymoon period between the financés (and expectant parents) instead saw a rehash of the typical reality dating mess: After he and A.D. were split up due to an arbitrary gameplay twist in episode 6, Ollie quickly moved on and made out with Justine Ndiba. When A.D. returned the next day during the boys’s mixer, Ollie lied directly to A.D.’s face. Though she eventually forgave him, Ollie’s many red-flag behaviors left viewers much less enthused about Perfect Match’s one fairytale couple.

I won’t go as far as to call this a bait-and-switch. Anyone who’s seen an episode of Perfect Match (or any other Netflix Reality Universe show) should be used to fights and crash outs superseding actual love stories. Each season so far has received love-hate criticism for being overly chaotic and full of manufactured conflict, while season 3 flew too close to the sun by having its one confirmed couple’s storyline hinge on breaking up the house’s two strongest pairings. Sure, the change-up provided novelty, but it also betrayed fans who were tuning in for the parasocial feels A.D. and Ollie’s story could’ve provided. There’s a difference between seeing Ollie self-sabotage organically—which undoubtedly would’ve happened at the boys’s mixer if A.D. wasn’t there—and watching him fail a producer-planted test.

It also didn’t help that the episode 6 twist followed a trend that reality TV fans had already gotten their fill of by the time Perfect Match aired. Unlike previous years, season 3 debuted after Love Island USA season 7 had concluded—racking up over 18 billion minutes watched, per Peacock—and sucked up most reality viewers’s energy and goodwill. After season 6’s breakout year, season 7 failed to replicate its mix of authentic yet heightened drama, genuine friendships, and romances. Instead, producers prioritized chaos via fan votes over traditional recouplings, creating an environment where playing the field was mandatory and promising relationships were punished. One of the final couples, Huda Mustafa and Chris Seeley, broke up during the finale—a first in franchise history that showed how far season 7 strayed from the ethos that made the series an international phenomenon. Meanwhile, the most popular out of the season by far, Nicolandria, is the stuff of fan theory come to life; though they’re a charming couple, it’s concerning in a season where fans were arguably given too much power.

As summer 2025 comes to an end, the future of the dating show looks bleak. Love Island USA isn’t technically over, since the season 7 reunion special isn’t until August 25, but its notoriety, fueled by cast member racism scandals and toxic fandom, will loom over season 8’s production. Bachelor in Paradise has undergone a total makeover that has divided fans over its brand-new location and the addition of a cash prize. The U.S. iteration of Love Is Blind returns in October for its whopping ninth season, following its most boring installment yet earlier this year. And Love Is Blind: UK’s second season begins two days before the Perfect Match season 3 finale, as Netflix reaches a peak of unscripted-TV saturation. As someone who watches reality TV for a living, it feels like the genre could face a turning point: Will producers course-correct, or will future seasons only give fans dread in the pit of their stomachs, with no room for butterflies? Is this the beginning of reality TV’s enshittification?

It’s time for mainstream American reality TV to press pause and invest in low-stakes drama and slow-burn relationships. It would mean a return to reality’s roots; many of today’s most-watched franchises grew their popularity by balancing jaw-dropping storylines with fan-favorite romances. Love Is Blind didn’t grow into a behemoth without Lauren and Cameron; Bachelor Nation survives off couples like Sean and Catherine and Trista and Sutter. American shows can also take a note from series that have found popularity with much lower stakes. International shows like The Boyfriend and Better Late Than Single are breaths of fresh air that suck viewers in despite their slower pacing.

Despite the trend of 2025’s dating shows turning up the conflict, people don’t watch reality TV just for the drama. Whether their viewing is prompted by an attachment to their favorite cast members, voyeuristic observation as an escape from day-to-day life, or meta analysis of unscripted editing and cultural tropes (okay, that last one may be just me), viewers of these shows don’t want or need wall-to-wall misery when we can get that elsewhere (like the news). Producers need to remember that if they continue to take the fun out of reality TV, fans can easily stop watching.

Listen, travel is amazing. Whether you’re sticking close to home or crossing time zones, visiting new places can open your eyes to other cultures and help you reap once-in-a-lifetime experiences. But it can also be expensive, draining your PTO days faster than you can say, ”Mon dieu, in this economy?” These days, we’re all about being thoughtfully frugal while remaining eager to learn how different folks live around the globe. Enter novels in translation, which can whisk you away from the doldrums of daily life and plant you anywhere from the Swiss Alps to a Berlin nightclub, no baggage fees required.

That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the most exciting translated novels and short story collections to check out when you can’t leave home, whatever the reason. From a debut book of short stories about resilient Mexican women to a #Booktok-approved Italian series and the latest novel from the first South Korean author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, these books are sure to stamp your (literary) passport. Below, check out some of the top translated novels and short stories to read now. Bon voyage!

Three years later, The Gilded Age has reached new heights, with season 3 drawing in more viewers than ever and growing to surprisingly life-or-death stakes compared to the show's low-stakes beginnings. (Remember when season 1's finale hinged on getting Mrs. Astor to attend a ball?) Following the season 3 finale on August 10, 2025, fans are clamoring for news of the show's future. Below, read on for everything we know about The Gilded Age season 4 so far.

Has 'The Gilded Age' been renewed for season 4?

Yes! HBO announced the renewal on July 28, two weeks before the season 3 finale. The renewal came as the series continued to reach new viewership feats week after week. According to Deadline, ahead of the season 3 finale, The Gilded Age was "adding viewers at a rate nearly 50 percent higher than in previous seasons."

"We couldn’t be prouder of the undeniable viewership heights The Gilded Age has achieved this season,” said Francesca Orsi, EVP, HBO Programming, Head of HBO Drama Series and Films. "Transporting us to 1880s New York City, Julian Fellowes and the enormously talented cast and crew have created a 'cant-miss it' entertainment experience from week to week, and we’re delighted to continue exploring these characters’ grand ambitions for what we promise will be a thrilling fourth season."

When will 'The Gilded Age' season 4 come out?

There's no official release date for season 4 yet, so the timeline for new episodes is unclear. In the past, season 1 premiered in January 2022, followed by season 2 in October 2023, and season 3 in June 2025. However, the 2023 Hollywood strikes contributed to the delay between seasons 2 and 3, so season 4 could likely arrive even sooner. Fingers crossed that new episodes could start airing in late 2026!

Which of the cast will return for 'The Gilded Age' season 4?

As of the season 3 finale, most of the show's stacked cast will likely return for season 4. This includes *deep breath*: Carrie Coon (Bertha Russell), Morgan Spector (George Russell), Taissa Farmiga (Gladys Russell), Harry Richardson (Larry Russell), Christine Baranski (Agnes van Rhijn), Cynthia Nixon (Ada Brook), Louisa Jacobson (Marian Brook), Blake Ritson (Oscar van Rhijn), Denée Benton (Peggy Scott), Audra McDonald (Dorothy Scott), Jordan Donica (Dr. William Kirkland), Ben Lamb (Hector, Duke of Buckingham), Kelley Curran (Enid Winterton), Kelli O'Hara (Aurora Fane), Donna Murphy (Mrs. Astor), Ben Ahlers (Jack Treacher), Douglas Sills (Monsieur Baudin), Celia Keenan-Bolger (Mrs. Bruce), Simon Jones (Mr. Bannister), Jack Gilpin (Church), Debra Monk (Armstrong), Phylicia Rashad (Elizabeth Kirkland), and Brian Stokes Mitchell (Frederick Kirland.)

Meanwhile, we'll have to wait and see if characters who were ousted from society will return in some capacity. Fingers crossed that Nathan Lane (Ward McAllister) will be back at some point!

What will 'The Gilded Age' season 4 be about?

Spoilers for The Gilded Age season 3 finale ahead. Season 3 of The Gilded Age ends with the unthinkable: The Russells may be done for good. After the show's most fascinating and ambitious couple spent the season at odds over their daughter Gladys's marriage, George recovers from being shot, but his near-death experience prompts him to leave his wife Bertha after her Newport Ball. The Russells's marriage is the best part of the show for most fans, so their separation and reconciliation (I'm manifesting it) will be a large part of season 4. (Also, George gets addicted to laudanum? We'll see.)

Both Russells shared their thoughts on the split in the hours following the season 3 finale. Morgan Spector was optimistic, telling TVLine, "Because we know how good this couple can be together, it would be really fascinating to see them spend a season figuring out how to get back to each other."

Meanwhile, when asked by Variety whether the pair will be able to put their differences aside, Carrie Coon answered, "I don’t know. It depends what George wants." She added of George's near-death revelations, "That feels very real to me in long-term relationships. One person can go through a very transformative experience that the other person doesn’t have access to, and it takes them a while to find their way back to each other."

Season 4 will also be a big season for engagements: Marian and Larry are still on course; Peggy is newly betrothed to her beau William (despite his mother's objections); and Oscar may be headed toward a lavender marriage with Enid. Also, despite her initial devastation at marrying a stranger, Gladys is happily pregnant by the season finale.

While speaking with Marie Claire about the season 3 finale, Taissa Farmiga shared her hopes for Gladys in season 4, including whether she might continue her arc in England or return to America. "What sets us apart from Downton Abbey is that it's American history, and I'm curious how much they [will] show Gladys in England, or would she be able to come back and, I don't know, bring some English manners and chaos to New York?" she said. "I hope I don't have to play pregnant too long. I don't want to have to wear a corset with a pregnancy belt. Let's just throw this out there—maybe Julian reads this. But also I'll do what I have to do!"

As for how Gladys will approach being a mother, Farmiga said, "I think she will be more inspired by George's parenting than by Bertha's parenting. I think she's going to want to give more of the emotional comfort that Bertha doesn't give, even though we know Bertha loves her children. She loves them so much, but sometimes a child needs a hug and a gentle smile, not like a firm guiding hand. Sometimes it's just acknowledging their feelings."

Of the pair, Recchia remained in the villa for most of the season and kissed a lot of frogs before she found a potential prince in Ray Gantt, a former finalist from Love Island USA. So, did the pair continue their romance outside of the show's filming? Read on for everything we know about Rachel and Ray’s journey on Perfect Match season 3 and where they are now.

What happened between Rachel and Ray on 'Perfect Match' season 3?

Rachel arrived in the villa early in the season's run, after being put on a date with Freddie (Love Is Blind: UK). However, any potential she and Freddie had was completely overshadowed when she reunited with Clayton (The Bachelor). For anyone unfamiliar with their history, Rachel made it to the top three contestants in Clayton's season alongside Gabby Windey and Susie Evans. Clayton slept with both Gabby and Rachel and told them he loved them, before dumping them to run after Susie after she self-eliminated. Rachel and Gabby went on to become the first-ever joint Bachelorettes, but Rachel ultimately left her Bachelorette run single.

Despite their previous relationship being the reason he's considered one of the worst Bachelors ever, Clayton convinced Rachel that their meeting in the villa must be fate, and that they should give things another chance. Fast forward 24 hours later—after Clayton went on a date with Sandy (The Ultimatum), and they're both rated the best kissers—and Clayton told Rachel that he had just gotten swept up in the excitement of seeing her again, and that he didn't want to pursue things with her.

Thankfully, Clayton at least gave Rachel a chance to stay in the house, as he and Sandy set her on a date with Scott (Love Island: UK). The pair hit it off enough to match and stay together for a few episodes, but Rachel questioned whether he sincerely liked her or if he was waiting for new women to come along.

Meanwhile, Ray entered the show in episode 6, when Madison was set up on a double date with him and Jalen (Too Hot to Handle). He doesn't have much luck with the women, though his banter with Lucy instigates an unnecessary fight between Lucy and Daniel. Of course, Ray immediately came back again for the gender-separated mixers, where the coupled cast members could spend time with the singles. Rachel took the chance to speak with the guys without Scott around, and she and Ray instantly hit it off as lover-girl met lover-boy. Even though Rachel was also attracted to Carrington (Love Island USA), she decided to match with Ray, who seemed to be looking for the same future as her.

As soon as they matched, Rachel and Ray showed off their chemistry and teamwork by winning the season's final compatibility challenge. The pair had a very cute lucha libre wrestling date, and the only hint of discord was when Carrington made one more pass at Rachel. She shut him down quickly, and Rachel and Ray ended the night by matching and making up a couple handshake.

At season 3's finale ceremony, when the entire cast returned to vote for the winning couple, Rachel and Ray gushed about how similar-minded they are and how happy they were to find each other. Clayton and Justine (Ray's Love Island USA bestie) even chimed in to say how much they made sense. However, this season added one last compatibility challenge, a newlywed game that narrowed the final five couples down to two. Rachel and Ray were unfortunately knocked out of the running because they could not remember exactly where their first kiss took place.

Are Rachel and Ray still together after 'Perfect Match' season 3?

Unfortunately for fans who were rooting for the pair, Rachel and Ray ultimately weren't meant to be. While Ray made it out to L.A., Rachel revealed to Elite Daily that their connection was more platonic, even while they were on the dating show.

"I have seen him in L.A. quite a bit. We are friends," she told the outlet. "We were super late in the process when we formed a relationship, so it didn’t have much time to progress past friendship. I don't know if we ever really were in a real relationship."

Though things didn't work out with Ray, Rachel did confirm to Parade that she is seeing someone from the show. "I’m talking to someone actually, but we’ll see where it goes," she told the outlet. "The person I’m talking to is actually from the show. But who knows? Who knows?"

Even before season 3 ended, Rachel had hinted that several cast members had been dealing with dating drama recently, especially after they all reunited for Netflix's Summer Break press junket and party last month.

"There's a lot still going on, like, even just from that Netflix [Summer Break] event," she said on "The Viall Files" podcast on August 5. "There’s a lot happening. Oh, my god, there might have been more drama at that Netflix event [than on the show]. There’s still stuff going on, [even though] filming was a year ago. [There were] lots of people fighting [and] couples getting back together."

When asked whether she recently rekindled something, Rachel answered, "Who knows? I might be talking to someone. You guys know I love a second chance and a third and a fourth! I am just so full of forgiveness."

At the beginning of season 3, Farmiga’s Gladys Russell is a sweet, naive teenager hellbent on marrying for love instead of status, despite her mother Bertha’s machiavellian plans to wed her to the Duke of Buckingham. Bertha (Carrie Coon) trumps Gladys, and by the end of the season, the 18-year-old has been sent to Sidmouth, the Duke’s estate in England; found empowerment by showing her sister-in-law who’s boss; and become sort of smitten with the Duke. Oh, she also ends the season pregnant—and happy.

Guess Bertha was right.

It’s a thrilling arc for any actor, and one that Farmiga was delighted to learn about during a conversation with series creator Julian Fellowes and executive producer David Crockett before filming began. “It's been a fucking emotional rollercoaster,” she tells Marie Claire of the season.

Speaking excitedly about the series from her home in the South of France, Farmiga shares her admiration for her “powerhouse” co-stars who make up the Russell family (Coon; Morgan Spector, who plays her father George; and Harry Richardson, who plays her brother Larry), the show in general (“It's history books and cotton candy. It's incredible”); and the costume department (“These are masters of their craft”).

On the heels of Sunday’s season 3 finale, Farmiga explains how Gladys becomes “Mini Bertha,” how finding her freedom might mean embracing her mother’s sensibilities after all, and what she hopes to see for Gladys in season 4.

Marie Claire: Throughout this season, we see Gladys go from a lovelorn girl to a devastated bride to a confident duchess and soon-to-be mother. How did you calibrate your performance as you moved through those roles?

Taissa Farmiga: When she starts season 3, she feels like she has power over her mother. She's learned how to navigate her with the help of her brother, Larry. They have that sibling dynamic with the winks and the smiles and the sneaky glances, like they know how to maneuver around Bertha Russell. But in the end, they really don't.

MC: No one does.

TF: No one does, not even her husband. But you see she's feeling on top of the world. You see her talk back a bit to her mother. Then her whole world comes crashing down, and that's the divot in the middle of the season [when she gets married]. At the end, things start to work out. Gladys will never admit that Bertha was right, but maybe she wasn't 100 percent wrong. The writing is there, the character arc is there, and I get to work with phenomenal actors.

MC: What have you learned from working with Morgan and Carrie, and how do you approach working with them?

TF: I'm a person who loves to observe, and these are two actors who are so intelligent and so cool. The Russell family dynamic really clicked immediately. When I'm there, and I'm looking in their eyes, and I'm feeling all the despair and the sadness and the loneliness and the betrayal that Gladys is feeling, and it's just Morgan's there looking so heartbroken as George, you don't have to play pretend that much. Obviously, it's hard work, but when you really connect with another actor, you fall into it and all of a sudden you kind of forget what's happening between “action” and “cut,” because you're just so immersed. And Carrie is so good at being a cunt. Pardon my French.

MC: This is a unique ensemble in that there are so many different women from different generations. I'm curious if that has affected your experience filming?

TF: You can feel the experience. You can feel the history. You can feel the knowledge and the talent when you walk in the room. I'm not sure if it's due to the fact that a lot of our cast is theater actors, but there's a different sort of core you have as someone who's based in the theater. There's more camaraderie. There's appreciation for the familial aspect of it. There's no battle for, I'm head bitch or I'm the one who's supposed to be number one on the call sheet. There's no cattiness.

MC: In the second half of the season, Bertha comes to visit Gladys in England, and that’s when Gladys’s fortune starts to change. For one, she and her mother have a new dynamic. They’re in cahoots together. One of the best scenes is when Gladys gets the courage to tell her sister-in-law, Lady Sarah, to sit down and wait for her to finish her meal. You get a glimpse that perhaps there is a little bit of Bertha in Gladys.

TF: Look, Gladys is a Russell. There's no way she doesn't have the genes of George and Bertha, whose love language is ambition. No matter what people say around them, they're going to trust their gut instincts more than anything. They're going to push for what they believe to be the best for their family, even if the other family members don't fully see or agree with the plan.

This is the first time in three seasons that we're seeing Gladys and her mom link and connect in any way. All Gladys has been fighting for the past three seasons was freedom and liberty and not being under her mother's thumb. She didn’t want to be a mannequin or a doll for her mother to dress.

But what's funny is that Gladys finally finds her freedom by becoming like her mother, by embracing the skills or the personality traits of Bertha. In that moment, I'm sure there's still leftover rage and trauma from being forced to marry, but what are parents if they don't give you trauma? She finally catches a glimpse of Maybe my mother does love me. She starts to understand. George's love has been a bit more about Gladys's present-day happiness, and Bertha's has been about her future happiness.

MC: So many stories that depict arranged marriages during this time period are about beautiful, naive ingenues who end up marrying abusive, evil men. I was waiting for that to happen and was so pleasantly surprised when the Duke proved me wrong.

TF: Hector is not a dick. They're just two people who hadn't really had a moment to get to know each other. Of course, she would be scared to marry a stranger, but she really never gave him a chance. I thought it was beautiful when she asked him before the wedding, "Is it okay if I don't love you?" And he was just honest. That was the first moment they connected.

They're two people, both lost in different ways. During the negotiations, George offered more money to Hector through the means of an allowance for Gladys. That really tilled the soil to be able to plant the seed for partnership, because Hector has to rely on his wife. Hector is just a bit aloof, and is content with "My sister does everything." When Gladys comes in, she’s like, Well, hold on. Mini Bertha can come in and grow to be big Bertha.

MC: At the end of season 3, Gladys tells her mother she’s pregnant. What do you think Gladys will be like as a mother?

TF: I think she will be more inspired by George's parenting than by Bertha's parenting. I think she's going to want to give more of the emotional comfort that Bertha doesn't give, even though we know Bertha loves her children. She loves them so much, but sometimes a child needs a hug and a gentle smile, not like a firm guiding hand. Sometimes it's just acknowledging their feelings.

MC: When Gladys set sail for England, I was a little worried that we weren't going to see much of her. If there is a season 4, what do you hope we'll see from her? [Editor’s Note: Since this interview, HBO renewed The Gilded Age for a fourth season.]

TF: What sets us apart from Downton Abbey is that it's American history, and I'm curious how much they [will] show Gladys in England, or would she be able to come back and, I don't know, bring some English manners and chaos to New York? I hope I don't have to play pregnant too long. I don't want to have to wear a corset with a pregnancy belt. Let's just throw this out there—maybe Julian reads this. But also I'll do what I have to do!

MC: All the costumes in the show are exceptional. Did you notice a shift between American Gladys and English Gladys?

TF: There was a huge shift between American Gladys and Gladys arriving in Sidmouth. The fabrics changed. There was a bit more of this flat and softer stuff, whereas she wore more satin in New York. New York is definitely more showy. In England, everything has to be more subdued. The costumes are absolutely, absolutely insane. What's wild is that they had to cut the wardrobe budget this season.

MC: You could never tell.

TF: It feels like they've stepped it up. It feels like they had more money.

MC: What was your favorite scene of the season to film?

TF: I love the scene that you mentioned when she's in Sidmouth and Bertha's there, and it's the first time you see Gladys become a mini Bertha. Speaking of the wardrobe, they had put a different dress in my trailer for that scene. It was this lilac purple flowy dress, which was very emblematic of previous season Gladys. It was the first time in three seasons that I was like, I don't agree. I don't feel like this is the right dress.

This is the moment that Gladys puts her foot down. She takes her place and she uses her title. She's the Duchess in that moment. I asked for one of my favorite outfits of the season—the dress I wore in that scene. It was this darker blue, a bit lacy. It felt a tiny bit sexy for the time period. It felt more mature, it felt lady-like.

I was so humbled that they allowed me to express my feelings about the character and be like, "Can we change it?" I felt more confident and in the moment, and it was a very triumphant moment for Gladys.

MC: What was the most difficult scene to film?

TF: I feel like the wedding lasted three weeks. If you look at my career, you’ll see that maybe 70 percent of my projects have been genre or genre-adjacent. Everything's so heightened in genre pieces, and you feel things so much more. That’s why I love Gladys’s arc this season. The high was super high and the low was super low. You really get to feel everything so intensely. Maybe it's exhausting and you have to calculate how much water you're drinking to make sure that you still have enough tears to keep doing this crying part for seven hours a day, but whatever. So even though it was the hardest scene, it also was one of my favorites as well.

I'm grateful to spread my wings a bit and get some nice meaty scenes and see this girl grow. We've seen her journey, but she's always kind of been an accessory to even the big moments in her life, like her coming out ball. She was an accessory to Bertha's moment. This time she got to shine.

It’s hard to pin her down—Brie likes to mix it up. Genre-wise, she’s done a little of everything, and she’s also stepped behind the camera as a writer and producer on projects like Horse Girl and Somebody I Used to Know. (She starred in both, too. And for the record, that adds two more genres to her résumé: psychological thriller and rom-com.)

Now, she's trying something scarier with Together. As she explains on the latest episode of "Nice Talk", horror is a space she’d love to stay in for a while.

"I like to do it all, I really do," Brie tells Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. "I think that it's what has made for a really fun career is coming out of one project and saying, 'Oh, good. Now I scratched that itch. What can I do that's really different from that?'"

Together, which is in theaters now, is certainly different. Brie co-stars in the body horror film alongside her husband, Dave Franco. They play a longtime couple who begin experiencing mysterious physical changes.

"Going into this film, Dave and I were like, this is a risky choice," Brie says. "There are a lot of things in this movie that, if they weren't done perfectly, if they weren't executed perfectly, could be pretty embarrassing."

The 42-year-old goes on, "Lately, I just love the horror space. I feel like I'm running at it. I would love to do more stuff in horror—the weirder, the better. I just think people who are making horror and genre films now are taking the biggest risks, and they're writing really unique material and stuff that you haven't seen before, and so that is very exciting."

She especially loves how filmmakers like Jordan Peele use horror to "make commentary on larger issues." In Together, that means examining "relationships and monogamy and codependency." As Brie puts it, "Horror is such a fun space in which to delve deeper into topics and sort of extrapolate them to their different horrifying degrees."

Still, while she is in a horror era, comedy remains her comfort zone.

"It's like the closest to my personality, because I like to joke around," she says. "I'm a jokester. I'm like a kid on a set. I always just want to be making noise and having fun."

For more from Brie—including stories from her early career, how she decided to start collaborating with her husband, and her press tour style—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Now, fans are clamoring for news on whether the cult-loved series will return for more historical drama. Below, read on for everything we know about The Buccaneers season 3 so far.

Has 'The Buccaneers' been renewed for season 3?

As of the release of the season 2 finale, Apple TV+ hasn't given any word on whether The Buccaneers will return for a third season. However, there's a good chance that the series could get a season 3, as Apple tends to renew shows with solid audiences. For example, Dickinson, the streamer's closest period-drama equivalent, lasted three series before coming to an end.

When would 'The Buccaneers' season 3 come out?

It's difficult to predict a release date without a renewal announcement, but we can consider the show's production schedule so far. After season 1 concluded in December 2023, season 2 was filmed in the second half of 2024 and premiered in June 2025. Depending on when the renewal comes, season 3 could arrive on our screens by 2027.

Which of the cast will return for 'The Buccaneers' season 3?

Pending any huge changes, most of the ensemble cast is expected to return for season 3, including Kristine Frøseth (Nan St. George), Alisha Boe (Conchita Closson), Josie Totah (Mabel Elmsworth), Aubri Ibrag (Lizzy Elmsworth), Imogen Waterhouse (Jinny St. George), Christina Hendricks (Mrs. St. George), Guy Remmers (Theo, Duke of Tintagel), Matthew Broome (Guy Thwarte), and Barney Fishwick (Lord James Seadown).

One star whose future with the show is in question is Mia Threapleton, as Honoria Marable is off to pursue a teaching career abroad. Also, Josh Dylan will likely not return after the tragic death of Lord Richard Marable.

What will 'The Buccaneers' season 3 be about?

Spoilers for The Buccaneers season 2 finale ahead. The events of The Duchess's Masquerade set up a very dramatic fight for Tintagel to come in season 3. After Theo decides to abdicate and divorce Nan, Blanche (Amelia Bullmore) reveals that his father had a secret son, and that Theo's half-brother Kit will now be the Duke of Tintagel. Kit's said to be horrible, so it's likely that he'll become a major player in the next installment.

As for the Nan-Theo-Lizzy love triangle, Nan's pregnancy—of which Theo is still clueless—will continue to provide plenty of drama for the series, as he must choose between his all-consuming love for Lizzy and protecting his child.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kristine Frøseth admitted that she has no idea where her character is running off to in the finale's last scene. "I am just as curious as you are," she told the outlet. "I'm hoping she just keeps running. She meets a group of women, and they all raise the baby together somewhere, and she leaves all the drama behind."

The latter pair get off to a strong start in the villa, when the Love Is Blind season 8 alum puts herself on a date with the Love Is Blind: UK fan favorite. However, tears quickly begin flowing when the other couples—and even the Netflix reality show itself—begin testing their bond by putting them on separate dates.

So, do the pair survive the tests? Or do temptations break them apart? Read on for everything we know about Madison and Freddie’s journey on Perfect Match season 3 and where they are now.

What happened between Madison and Freddie on 'Perfect Match' season 3?

Madison arrived in the villa on day one, and the 28-year-old Minneapolis resident initially matched with Cody (Temptation Island). The pair were in sync enough to win the show's first challenge, but Madison's most memorable comment about Cody was that he needed a tongue scrapper and mouthwash, so she didn't seem that into him.

Once they got into the boardroom, Madison took charge and set herself up on a date with funeral director Freddie. He said that he's a sucker for a "crazy girl" who's "a bit fire-y," and Madison's a fire sign, so it was no surprise when he asked her to match up. And Madison was clearly smitten, with her later saying that Freddie was a "unicorn" and maybe the "first good guy" she's met.

The pair's first major relationship test came after the compatibility challenge, where they placed second, which put a bit of a target on their back. AD and Ollie sent Freddie on a date with Rachel (The Bachelorette), and Madison got very emotional and upset. Freddie and Rachel had a cute painting date—Madison's dream date, cute—and they both had a great time. However, once they got into the villa, Rachel became preoccupied with her ex, Clayton, and told Freddie she wanted to try to rekindle their relationship. (Bachelor Nation won't be surprised how that went.) Freddie ended up asking Madison to match again, saying that they were a "no-brainer."

By the end of episode 5, Madison and Freddie were one of the show's stronger couples, ahead of a brand-new board twist. Lucy (Too Hot to Handle) and Daniel (Dated and Related) ranked Ollie and AD and Freddie and Madison as the two most compatible couples, after which host Nick Lachey told them that one member of each couple would be sent on a date and the other would be dumped from the villa. Lucy and Daniel chose Madison to go on a date, and Madison broke into tears once again while saying goodbye to Freddie. But this reality TV, so the show must go on.

Madison was then set up on a boxing workout with two dates: Jalen from Too Hot to Handle and Ray from Love Island USA. Though she said that Ray has "good energy," Jalen was apparently Madison's "type to a T." She chose Jalen to be her match at the end of the night, but she also made it clear that her mind was still on Freddie.

Then came the gender-separated mixers, where matched-up participants could chat with the singles without their partners around. All the single men came to the women's mixer, including...Freddie! Even though Madison immediately went to hug him and he'd only been gone for a day, Freddie said in a confessional that he's anxious she may not feel the same. Of course, amid the girls's chill pool day, Madison told Freddie that she never stopped thinking about him, and that "if it's not Freddie, it's not for me."

Once the entire cast was brought back for a mixer in episode 8, Madison and Freddie were nearly the fastest pair to couple up. (Lucy and Daniel beat them by a minute or two.) They also sailed through the final round of matches in episode 9. Unfortunately, the pair seemed to come down from cloud nine during their final date, when they had a "realistic" conversation about where they could go in the real world. When Madison asked if Freddie would consider moving to the U.S., he pointed out that he couldn't move away from his brother. Madison said she'd move to Manchester, England, but the hesitation was obvious.

At season 3's final ceremony, there wasn't anything that the rest of the cast could say negatively about Madison and Freddie as a couple. Even Cody only said that Freddie was a nice guy and there was no bad blood. Madison gushed that Freddie is "written by a woman," and Freddie declared that the night was only "the end of chapter one" of their story. Unfortunately, the finale had one last compatibility challenge, and Madison and Freddie were knocked out of the running for the grand prize when they couldn't remember exactly where their first kiss was. So, the pair was not declared the season's perfect match.

Are Madison and Freddie still together after 'Perfect Match' season 3?

Unfortunately, as Freddie revealed to Elite Daily following the finale, his and Madison's relationship couldn't survive the long distance between Manchester, England and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

"We carried on speaking afterwards, but we were very realistic about the fact that there was 4,000 miles between us," he told the outlet. "And gradually over time, it just became apparent that it was more of a friendship....In the bubble of Perfect Match, it was a roller coaster of emotions in this surreal environment, and moving back to the norm of real life, it just became apparent that continuing to date probably wasn’t the best idea."

Madison has yet to share her take on her and Freddie's split, but she has been vocal about other parts of the season on TikTok, so there's a good chance that more updates are yet to come. Freddie has also been recapping his Perfect Match experience on his podcast with Beniah (remember Nicole and Beniah?!), so he may have more to say soon about what happened after the cameras stopped rolling.

Ben Higgins and Lauren Bushnell, 'The Bachelor'/'Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?')

Sometimes couples are relatable in their real-life struggles. When Ben Higgins and Lauren Bushnell ended up together on The Bachelor, fans appreciated how much they seemed like a normal couple who just happened to be struggling with massive fame. By the time they filmed Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?, Higgins called them "work associates" rather than partners.

Miguel Harichi and Leah Kateb, 'Love Island'

If you watched Love Island USA season 6, you may remember Miguel Harichi and Leah Kateb. They were an extremely charismatic couple who got together early, and the two continued to date after the show wrapped (with Harichi referring to Kateb as his "wife").

Ace Young and Diana DeGarmo, 'American Idol'

While Ace Young and Diana DeGarmo did not technically meet on American Idol—they met on the Broadway revival of Hair, if you're curious—the two did get engaged on the show's season 11 finale. They have since collaborated together in addition to getting married.

Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge, 'The Beekman Boys'/'The Amazing Race'

The cofounders of lifestyle brand Beekman 1802 met online in 2000. Fans were first made aware of them in 2010 show The Fabulous Beekman Boys, in which the non-farming duo attempted to run a farm. The two also won hearts on The Amazing Race.

Kandi Burruss and Todd Tucker, 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta'

The Real Housewives franchise doesn't often give rise to couples that fans feel completely excited about, but Kandi Burruss (cast) and Todd Tucker (crew) were an exception. They met during a 2011 show trip to South Africa; they subsequently wed and had children together.

Tanner Tolbert and Jade Roper, 'Bachelor in Paradise'

There have been a few beloved couples from the Bachelor in Paradise series (which offers a more relaxed and less high-stakes vibe). Tanner Tolbert and Jade Roper were one such success story from season 2; they got engaged on the show, had a televised wedding in 2016, and have three kids.

Tiffany Pennywell and Brett Brown, 'Love Is Blind'

Sometimes referred to as “The Browns," Tiffany Pennywell and Brett Brown were married on season 4 of Love Is Blind. A recruiter and a Nike immersive design director, the two met in the show's signature pods and were instantly fan faves due to their sweet banter and maturity during the wild process.

Chrishell Stause and G Flip, 'Selling Sunset'

Chrishell Stause went through a lot of relationship turmoil on Selling Sunset. So when she introduced her new partner, G Flip (who uses they/them pronouns), fans fell head over heels for their joy. The couple celebrated their love with multiple wedding ceremonies.

Olandria Carthen and Nicolas Vansteenberghe, 'Love Island USA'

Love Island USA season 7 was a particularly popular iteration of the show. Part of the fan enthusiasm was for the couple who came in second: Olandria Carthen and Nicolas Vansteenberghe. Their chemistry and sweetness was absolutely off the charts from the very beginning.

Ashley Iaconetti and Jared Haibon, 'Bachelor in Paradise'

Ashley Iaconetti and Jared Haibon really had an epic ride on the way to marriage and children. They hit it off on Bachelor in Paradise but ended up friends. They met up again in season 3. Then, it finally happened (to fans' delight): they started dating in May 2018.

Alexa Alfia and Brennon Lemieux, 'Love Is Blind'

You know how there are some couples who become the favorites of an entire season? Well, Alexa and Brennon Lemieux were basically the stars of Love Is Blind season 3. There was no question whether they'd make it to the altar; the couple married and had their first child in 2024.

Ashley Hebert and J.P. Rosenbaum, 'The Bachelorette'

Ashley Hebert and J.P. Rosenbaum met on The Bachelorette, and fans were rooting for the easy-going couple to go the distance. They wed in 2012 and had kids, but then announced their divorce in 2020 (but continued to speakly highly of each other—continuing fans' love for them).

Daniele Donato and Dominic Briones, 'Big Brother'

Daniele Donato, who was returning for her second season, met and fell in love with Dominic Briones at Big Brother season 13. They became adorable best friends and made a showmance that lasted: they got married and their daughters were born in 2018 and 2021.

Sean and Catherine Lowe, 'The Bachelor'

Sean and Catherine Lowe met on season 17 of The Bachelor, and it was immediately apparent that they were good for each other. Both seemed to want the same things (and specifically a long-term relationship); fans tuned in to watch their televised wedding ceremony in January 2014.

Rachel Reilly and Brendon Villegas, 'Big Brother'

If you're unfamiliar with the term "showmance," it's the union between two people while competing on a dating or other reality show. But sometimes showmance can turn into romance, as was the case for the real-life connection between Big Brother's Rachel Reilly and Brendon Villegas.

 Kordell Beckham and Serena Page, 'Love Island USA'

The Love Island USA season 6 winners didn't break up when the cameras stopped rolling. Kordell Beckham and Serena Page had some intense highs and lows on the show, but the charismatic, compelling duo were extremely watchable. And they kept things going after they won!

Molly and Jason Mesnick, 'The Bachelor'

Jason Mesnick was on Bachelor fans' naughty list for a while, mostly because he was the first contestant to change his mind about his winning bachelorette and start dating his runner-up Molly. But over time, with the couple getting married in 2010 and celebrating their 15th anniversary in 2025, fans came around to the sweetness of their love.

Chip Arndt and Reichen Lehmkuhl, 'The Amazing Race'

The official winners of The Amazing Race season 4 (and the first gay team to win), it was still relatively unusual at the time to see an LGBTQ+ couple on a reality TV show. CBS even added the word "Married" to their chyron even though same-sex marriage wasn't legal yet.

Amber Brkich and Rob Mariano, 'Survivor: All Stars'

Amber Brkich and Rob Mariano met in 2003 while competing on Survivor: All Stars. It was an alliance, then it was a full-on showmance, then it ended with a proposal in the finale. Fans were delighted (since the show isn't primarily focused on romance); the couple married in 2005.

Ice-T and Coco Austin, 'Ice Loves Coco'

Ice-T and Coco Austin met on the set of a music video in 2001 and were inseparable since then. Fans didn't know about their union until the show Ice Loves Coco, but they were tickled by the couple's opposite personalities and shared sense of humor that made for three very watchable seasons.

Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, 'The Hills'

To be honest, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt weren't always fan faves, especially not on The Hills. But over time (and lots of reality tv appearances), "Speidi" have proven themselves to be quite the pairing. If fans love anything, it's the spectacle they deliver.

Keith Tollefson and Whitney Duncan, 'Survivor'

Keith Tollefson and Whitney Duncan met on the set of Survivor: South Pacific in 2011. It was pretty obvious that there was chemistry between them and, indeed, they became a couple. Then, in 2013, they were called to compete together on The Amazing Race—then, after that, they got married.

Joey Graziadei and Kelsey Anderson, 'The Bachelor'

While The Bachelor doesn't always have the best track record, fans loved watching Joey Graziadei and Kelsey Anderson, a tennis teaching pro and a junior project manager, fall for each other. And then he went on to win season 33 of Dancing With the Stars!

Jessica Graf and Cody Nickson, 'Big Brother'

Sometimes going by the portmanteau "Jody," the showmance between Jessica Graf and Cody Nickson on Big Brother 19 transformed into real love. Fans then watched them compete—and win!—on The Amazing Race, so this union was forged in some intense circumstances.

Jeff Schroeder and Jordan Lloyd, 'Big Brother'

Another Big Brother showmance that lasted beyond the show, Jeff Schroeder and Jordan Lloyd met during season 11 in 2009. They met, became friends, became something more than friends, got engaged in season 16 of the show, and then married and had kids once they were out.

Jamie Otis and Doug Hehner, 'Married at First Sight'

Jamie Otis was actually a Bachelor contestant, but then participated on the very first season of Married at First Sight in 2014. She met and immediately married Doug Hehner, and (even though they weren't initially passionate about each other), they eventually made a lasting couple.

Jionni LaValle and Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, 'Jersey Shore'

In 2010, Snooki met Jionni LaValle at the Jersey Shore-famous nightclub Karma while she was filming the show. She wasn't totally into him, at first, but lo and behond: they got together and filmed a bunch of episodes together before ultimately marrying and having children.

Cameron Hamilton and Lauren Speed, 'Love Is Blind'

On the first-ever season of Love Is Blind, a content creator and a scientist met and fell in love. Frankly, fans didn't think any of those first couples would last past the show (in part because of the wild premise), but Cameron Hamilton and Lauren Speed proved them wrong in a wonderful way.

Bayleigh Dayton and Chris Williams, 'Big Brother'

Bayleigh and Swaggy C, as they were sometimes known on Big Brother season 20, were ones to watch on the show. The showmance blossomed into actual romance, ending with a sweet on-screen proposal; the two later married, had kids together, and moved to Dubai.

Ethan Diamond and Amber Lee, 'Are You the One?'

On the first season of Are You the One? the couples were particularly compelling since they were working with a totally new show structure. Ethan and Amber Diamond had an immediate connection and ended up being a winning couple, but they later noted it wasn't until after the show that they truly fell in love.

Olivia Buckland and Alex Bowen, 'Love Island'

Some reality couples win hearts because of their relatability. If you're not as familiar with the British version of the show, Olivia Buckland and Alex Bowen connected on Love Island in 2016 and shared their very real, sometimes messy lives. They've also appeared on shows including Olivia & Alex: Happily Ever After and Olivia And Alex Said Yes.

 Trista and Ryan Sutter, 'The Bachelor'

The couple that made reality TV fans believe in love! The first successful coupling in The Bachelorette, fans could tell immediately that Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter were genuine—and genuinely very into each other. The couple celebrated their 20-year wedding anniversary in 2023.

British electronic phenom PinkPantheress knows how to keep a party going. The hitmaker has a penchant for DJing when she’s out with friends, whether she’s at home in London or elsewhere. “There was one night in Bristol where I ended up playing some 2-step classics off my phone in this tiny kitchen at like 3 a.m.,” she tells Marie Claire. “Everyone was too tired to dance but still stayed to listen to the tracks—almost like, Don’t let the night end.”

That feeling is all over the 24-year-old’s frenetic new mixtape, Fancy That. The surprise release, which dropped in late May, is arguably PinkPantheress’s most certifiably British project to date. It's inspired by iconic DJs like Fatboy Slim and ‘90s U.K. garage, while also featuring the Y2K flares that captivated her Gen Z fans and made her an electro-pop musician to watch. She’s quickly become the frontrunner for the song of the summer crown since the album’s third single, “Illegal,” inspired a cheeky TikTok trend.

“It’s been kinda weirdly peaceful,” the recording artist says of her stratospheric climb up the charts. But she’s still learning how to strike the right balance between being an experimentalist and being a pop star. “It’s like arguing with yourself over whether to be mysterious or catchy. But the reward is when someone tells me they listened to a song on repeat and still felt like they hadn’t fully cracked it. That layered feeling makes the overthinking worth it.”

Here, PinkPantheress shares which other famous Brits inspire her as an artist, what Avril Lavigne song makes her cry, and who she’s eager to collaborate with.

Lily Allen or M.I.A. They made sounding like yourself feel cool. I was obsessed with how casual they sounded while saying the most cutting things.

Late '90s U.K. garage in real time—not just watching grainy footage on YouTube and romanticizing it from afar.

When they used “Only You” [by Yazoo] in The Office (U.K.). Not a movie, but still gut-wrenching.

I saw Paramore once and left feeling like I’d been in a dream. Hayley [Williams]’s presence onstage feels like she’s floating above time or something.

A faded Burial hoodie that’s definitely not aesthetic anymore, but I still wear it because it makes me feel cool, TBH.

“Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap. It’s so simple, but kills you if you’re in the right mood.

Clairo would be nice. Our sounds are quite soft, but something about that contrast of our usual instrumentation could be fun.

Pet Shop Boys, Lady Gaga, Kelela, M.I.A., and then someone unexpected like Solange, at sunset.

I weirdly go back to early Avril Lavigne. “I’m With You” still hits.

Anything that sounds like it could’ve played at a MISS SIXTY afterparty.

Some weird mix of trance, anime intros, and myself. It keeps me alert!

Something that makes everyone go, “Wait, what is this?” but still dance. Probably a deep cut from Fancy That.

“As I descend, I see my life flash again” [from “Ophelia”]. It’s dramatic, but in a way that felt true at the time, and it’s such a me way to say, “I was in over my head.”

“Motion Sickness” by Phoebe Bridgers—but only if you made it D&B.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

In this author-curated rendition, Bolu Babalola —screenwriter, pop culture journalist, and bestselling author of 2022’s Honey and Spice—shares her favorite romance books, specifically those about finding a second chance at love, the subject of her upcoming novel, Sweet Heat.

Author Bolu Babalola is a self-described “romcomoisseur.” Meaning, she’s seen just about every rom-com film under the sun and understands what stories—be it enemies-to-lovers or fake relationships—make audiences swoon.

But for her forthcoming book Sweet Heat, the British-Nigerian writer explored one of her most adored tropes: second-chance romance.

“I love second-chance romances because grace—a key component of love, I feel—is folded in; we are forced to excavate ourselves and the aspects of our growth (or lack of) and question if love can grow with us,” Babalola tells Marie Claire. “It's a beautiful thing to explore.”

So, for her new book, publishing September 2, she revisited the characters from her debut novel, Honey and Spice; now, Malakai and Kiki are exes forced to reconnect at their best friends’ wedding. Babalola explains that she “wanted to see how their love would bloom” by continuing their story.

“Malakai and Kiki met when they were in university, and whilst I absolutely believed their love was real and strong, it was also born in the bubble of university,” she says. “I love the characters so much and wanted to test their love in the outside world when real-life struggles and dynamics and growth would interact with it.”

Here, Babolala curates a list of her favorite books that also feature second-chance romances, from a classic by Jane Austen to a recent hit by Emily Henry.

Sweet Heat by Bolu Babalola will be published on September 2.

In contrast, the summer of 2025 may as well be dubbed the season of the anti-rom-com. From horror-influenced takes like Together and Oh, Hi!, to dark break-up comedy The Roses and the tonal sterility of Materialists, we are, as one seasoned producer I spoke to put it, in a season of "rom-coms by way of misery.”

So how did Hollywood get from 1997—when My Best Friend's Wedding was considered subversive for its untraditional “happy ending”—to now when nearly every major movie billing itself as a rom-com is dark and twisted from start to finish? Perhaps it’s because Hollywood as a whole is flailing. I've seen it myself, as a screenwriter regularly pitching rom-coms to studios. In 2025, the genre has splintered into something messier and more self-aware, shaped by cultural fatigue, shifting expectations around love and dating, and a growing appetite for stories that reflect just how bleak modern romance can feel. Now, studios are guessing at what people will venture out to theaters to see—and what stories a populace deadened by our current cultural climate can actually relate to. The result is a wave of films that trade twinkle lights for discomfort, and happy endings for something more complicated.

Consider July’s Oh, Hi!, starring Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman as the infatuated Iris and Isaac, who embark on their first romantic weekend away. Afternoon delights and firelit vulnerability take a turn, however, when Iris comments on the surprising ease of their new coupledom. She does not get the reply she expected, and their adorable upstate romance quickly devolves into a horror movie by way of situationship. The female lead holds Isaac captive, spending the bulk of the movie trying to convince the commitment-averse young man to see her value—and acting out the existential dread so many have experienced upon realizing their beautiful blossoming relationship is a farce.

Given all of the above, Oh, Hi! is hardly a traditional romantic comedy—but its writer-director, Sophie Brooks, still very much sees her film as fitting within the genre. "I think the purpose of rom-coms is to relate and feel ultimately amused…I think we're in a moment, in a beautiful way in our culture, where we're really craving freshness and originality and to feel seen," Brooks told me over Zoom in early July. "I'm a very romantic person and I really believe in love. I've also been a single woman dating in my thirties and been like, 'This is a hellscape.'"

Brooks seems to point to a growing trend in the industry: In search of the more grounded, the more searingly "real," filmmakers and execs alike have leaned on the sardonic, the sarcastic, and the skeptical that reflect their own less-than-ideal relationship experiences. (And in doing so they’ve earned praise within a genre that’s historically slept on by critics. The Hollywood Reporter said of Oh, Hi!: “The film is sure to attract young fans and find its audience. At its root, this is a surprisingly sensitive commentary on uniquely millennial romantic loneliness.”

Celine Song, too, mirrored her own life with this summer’s Materialists, pulling from her short stint as a matchmaker. And like Brooks, Song also sees her newest movie as a romantic comedy despite Song approaching the themes of her movie with a candor that can be rare for the genre. In my theater, the air drained from the room when Dakota Johnson's character, Lucy, finds out that a matchmaking client of hers was assaulted on a date. "Has something like this happened before?" Lucy asks her boss (Marin Ireland). "Of course," the boss replies. "This is dating."

Set against a posh New York City backdrop, the film's characters treat each other like lists of traits on a sheet of paper—no shorter than 6’2”; no incomes less than six figures; "no baldies"—a means to an end for their social and economic ambitions. It tracks, within that narrative, that Lucy would be forced to face the bleakness of her own world by someone taking its very concept too far.

From Song's perspective, that subversion brought Materialists closer to its audience. And ultimately it paid off: The film earned an estimated $12 million at the domestic box office in its opening weekend, making it the third-largest opening for an A24 film ever. “We’re not just showing up here to be in love and beautiful and get to be in a rom-com,” Song told the Los Angeles Times. “We’re also going to take this opportunity to talk about something. Because that’s the power of the genre.” It's worth noting that, among the 2025 fare described so far, Materialists is the most earnestly optimistic of the bunch. Spoiler alert: Lucy chooses love over her list, kissing her love interest on a stoop straight out of an Ephron movie.

"I think we're seeing it in books and in features that people, even underneath these movies that might otherwise feel a little frothy, are trying to really say something," says the producer I spoke to. (They requested anonymity to speak candidly about internal studio dynamics.) “We're getting more drama in a way. The classic '90s rom-coms were about a big idea, but not necessarily a heavy topic.”

Many of this summer’s films follow that lead, often starring A-listers better known for dramatic roles—actors capable of digging into more layered material. In The Roses (out August 29), Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch play a couple whose charming meet-cute slowly curdles into decades of resentment. The film presents itself as a sun-drenched romance, only to reveal itself as a deeply cynical satire of marriage—one where irritation and disappointment seem inevitable. Splitsville (September 5) follows suit with a messier, more absurdist tone: Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona star in a polyamorous entanglement between two couples unraveling through open relationships and retaliatory affairs. (And an eight-minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival signals audiences appreciated the premise.)

Together, these films reflect a recurring message: the modern romance movie isn’t just skeptical of love—it’s steeped in emotional exhaustion.

That disillusionment isn’t just creative—it’s commercial. The entertainment industry has always been a messy blend of the artistic and the aggressively corporate, with both sides shaping what gets made and how it’s sold. These days, rom-coms are often seen as a risk no one wants to take. “Directors really stay away from this genre, because even if you make a great one it’s not a genre that’s super well-respected in terms of filmmaking,” says producer Alex Saks, whose credits include No Hard Feelings and It Ends With Us. “If a rom-com doesn’t work—and most of them don’t—directors go to director jail.”

And without a boldface director attached, attracting an A-list cast becomes even harder. “To do a traditional rom-com you need a [certain level] of movie star,” Saks says. “The stars that we used to have—the Sandra Bullocks, Reese Witherspoons, Julia Robertses—they liked doing these movies. And now we don’t have a generation of stars that can really uphold them.” That casting crunch, she adds, is pushing financiers toward more genre-blending, subversive projects: “They’re choosing to throw something else into the mix to protect potential downsides.”

The other producer I spoke to is inclined to agree. As a development exec who’s worked with multiple A-listers and still champions the genre, she’s noticed a clear shift in studio appetite. “You need a different hook these days,” she said. “And honestly, I think you need more of an edge. We’re at a point where we’ve decided that romance doesn’t seem edgy.” Even Nancy Meyers couldn’t secure the budget she’s long commanded, ultimately scrapping a Netflix project mid-development.

Still, the producer believes the genre continues to sell in Hollywood, just not in the form many audiences grew up loving. The more "traditional" rom-coms—the sunnier, more aspirational fare of the '90s and 2000s—are largely being adapted from existing IP. "Basically every Emily Henry book is in development," she says. As of July, Henry, whose books all include the classic happily-ever-after, has one film (Beach Read) and one television show (Happy Place) headed to Netflix and five of her six published novels somewhere in the process of adaptation.

That, too, is part of the shift. The genre hasn’t vanished so much as split along tonal and commercial lines. This summer’s theatrical slate—marked by sarcasm, emotional fatigue, and narrative risk—caters to an audience that craves realism and edge. Meanwhile, the formulaic, lower-budget Hallmark-style rom-coms and IP-driven adaptations are still quietly thriving elsewhere, offering a familiar fix.

In some ways, the rom-com has adapted to survive, meeting different audiences where they are: some nostalgic for comforting structure, others looking for stories that reflect their messier, more skeptical realities. The genre hasn’t chosen a single direction—it’s fractured, yes, but also expanding.

But even if the genre is splintered, it’s far from dead. Maybe there’s room for all of it—the jaded, the joyful, and everything in between. Hollywood, after all, loves to ride a wave. Remember 2024, when three major movies centered on women over 40 dating guys in their 20s (two of them starring Nicole Kidman)? Or 2011’s dueling fuck-buddy rom-coms? Now, Celine Song is developing a sequel for My Best Friend's Wedding. Which suggests that even now, the genre might still pull off its signature trick: bringing two seemingly incompatible things—twinkle lights and subversion—together in the end.

During Pistotnik's 2021 hunt to build a client roster, she stumbled across a "story time" post from lifestyle influencer Mayci Neeley. After reaching out and hitting it off with her, she was referred to Taylor Frankie Paul, and eventually the rest of the #MomTok clan. Right away, Pistotnik could tell that their dynamic was perfect for reality TV—and that their posts only showed off a sampling of their “explosive” personalities offline.

“I liked them as people. I knew there was something bigger there," the now-executive producer tells me in her Beverly Hills office on a June afternoon. "I'm this Jewish gay woman from Los Angeles talking to these Mormons from Utah, and it feels like people I grew up with...We all have girlfriends who are like, 'Oh my God, we need a reality show about our lives,’ and it's like, well, everyone thinks that way. So when I met them, and my thought was, These girls should have a reality show, it was significant.”

Attending high school and college in the 2010s, Pistotnik noted the crossover of social media and celebrity; already, BuzzFeed creators and Beauty YouTubers were becoming brands in their own right. A decade later, Hollywood is learning what Pistotnik has known for years: Spend enough time online, and you'll find the future of pop culture.

To this day, Pistotnik is chronically online. Fourteen hours of screen time per day, a feed of “dudes making sandwiches, people lifting heavy weights, and for some reason, a shirtless photo of Nathan Fielder on a heart cake"—and, of course, everything to do with Mormon Wives. Her constant scrolling is what success looks like in entertainment's next frontier, where influencers lead the cultural touchpoints everybody's talking about.

On the heels of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season two's success and with a third installment on the way, Pistotnik discusses pitching the reality show after years of no’s, filming in Utah, and the digital creators taking over Hollywood.

In recent years, there has become a pipeline of reality stars becoming influencers off their shows. What made you consider the opposite?

When I started, it was so obvious to me that [digital creators] were the future of entertainment, and that people were just not catching on. My thought was like, These are the people that are going to drive viewers to television. [Why] are we not utilizing it? Eventually, they did, but the first four years I did this, if you wanted to bring an influencer into a traditional project, you got laughed out of the room. I think it was for no other reason than status quo and egos, and a lack of comfort in adapting to this new world. But then, slowly but surely, these tiny steps started happening. I think podcasting has a lot to do with it. We watched podcasting take over mainstream news media, and that was a really good first example of: This is the future.

These people have built-in audiences. It's so expensive to make shows, especially in L.A., so why would you not take these people that will automatically give you viewers, who don't cost a hundred million dollars to cast in your movie because they're not Zendaya? And I was right.

How do you find creators?

With the nature of my job, I'm chronically online. It's a mix of that, plus being in this industry and hearing what people want or who people are having conversations about. The combination of those things leads you in the right places.

SLOMW is your first time working in unscripted TV. Did you have any concerns about what that work would entail?

We got lucky with the Hulu side and Jeff Jenkins Productions, who are partners on this. If a girl's crying and has a bad day, it's like, Go home. Get a massage. We'll talk about this tomorrow. If their mental health is in danger, if they are in physical danger, if we're worried about anything, we're not poking the bear. We're like, Let's take a minute. If my coordinator was having a hard time, I would give her a week off work. We all get along really well. It's like a party. When we're on set, we're all going to the one bar in Utah that closes at 10:00 p.m. and having a good time.

What was the most unbelievable day you’ve had on set so far?

Oftentimes, the cameras start rolling and you don't think you're going to get anything, and you get the most insane scene of your life. It's always unexpected. Sometimes you question, Is it even worth getting cameras out? Is it even going to be anything? And then you get the scene that makes the episode, and none of it is scripted. That's the thing people don't understand; everyone says, ‘Reality shows aren't real.’ This is 100 percent real, zero-scripted. I don't think any of us could have expected everything to organically blow up this much.

Some critics argued that season two felt different from the first in the sense that the cast became more aware of the need to manufacture drama, even if it didn’t seem natural. How will the show continue balancing that?

There are a lot of meta moments in the show because we break the third wall. Half of the time, we're talking about the brand deals and negotiations, and all the things with Hulu. As opposed to a lot of shows where someone disappears or someone acts a certain way because they're protesting [something off-screen], we're addressing things head-on. So much of the drama of a reality show is the deals and money, the behind-the-scenes of, she got this and she got this. A lot of times, it goes unaddressed, and then people disappear and things fizzle out. So we discuss it, and I think that’s the best way to keep things moving forward.

I also think we empower women to have salary transparency and talk about their real experiences, especially in entertainment, where no one actually knows who gets what or what's realistic, and no one talks to each other about it. [By talking about it], the audience feels like, Okay, well she's not here because of this, and they're fighting because of this, instead of some mystery reason that everyone can assume is behind the scenes.

One thing about this cast is [that] there are issues and a lot of animosity at times, but they know that they're coworkers. No matter what goes on between the two of them, they're like, 'Well, we work together and we will show up to work together.' That's never been an issue. They're very professional.

In previous interviews, you’ve emphasized that as you were developing the show, you made sure that it wouldn’t be disrespectful to Mormonism. How do you balance that respect with the inherent need for reality TV to be sensational?

We're not manufacturing this idea of sensationalized religion, because the show isn't about the religion. It's about these people who grew up in the religion. As long as we stay true to the subject of the show is this group of women, not the Mormon church, then that will never be an issue. The second that we start trying to dive into the church, we're going to completely lose the plot of what the show is about, and all the sincerity is going to completely go out the window.

Influencers have made gains in the traditional media space, but there still seems to be a level of spectacle towards them. When do you see the transition from influencer to traditional celebrity becoming normalized?

Right now. Turn on your TV and look at the four biggest shows. It's like The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Benito Skinner's Overcompensating, Brian Jordan Alvarez's English Teacher, and then Adults on Hulu. Everyone woke up in the past year and was like, We have to do this.

I don't think a lot of people become influencers now because they want to be social media stars. I think we're seeing people who are writers, actors, directors, standup comics, and they realize, I could get an agent and go to auditions and get spit in the face, get a waiter job, do this, this, and this. Or, I can showcase myself online, build an organic audience, and have some leverage to then take that audience into traditional media. I think that's a better path. One, it shows initiative. Two, you have a proof of concept. Networks are not having to take risks anymore because they see that people are so engaged with this work.

How does the rise of creator-influencers affect your job, since you’ve worked more often with traditional influencers?

There's a nature that everyone who does my job has, where you're constantly searching for novelty and excitement and something different. I think people become managers, to be honest, because we couldn’t have normal jobs. I don't think I could sit at a desk and work from nine to five and do the same thing every day. I think that our brains are wired to want to close deals and try something new, and outdo the thing you did before, because then you're not going to get that beautiful dopamine hit of success anymore. So, for me, I don't think it's easier or harder. I am just more excited about it. I love this world. It's so much more fun.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The actress, 42, had gone on a walk that morning with her mom. She’d spent some time collecting and cutting videos from friends and family for a surprise virtual birthday card that “Davey”—as in Dave Franco, as in her husband, as in her co-star in many movies, including their latest codependency freakout Together—will open on his 40th the following week. Later that night, they’ll meet up for a dinner date.

But first, a game of pick-up bowling with me. I wish the hostess had given us the lane the young family is using—for the extra hint of privacy, and also for the bumpers. But we’re here. We should at least give bowling a shot; for the bit. We don’t even have to try. We can be a little silly, check the box, and move on to the actual agenda: digging into the jumpscares and scarily realistic resentment that made Together the “fucked up date night movie” everyone will see this summer; how she really felt about playing a dependent but bitter partner alongside her actual husband of eight years; what all her genre-hopping and hyper-productivity says about her talent.

To be fair, Brie is all upbeat energy. In her white tank top and wide-leg jeans, she moves with a bounce that is more than just her Salomon sneakers at work. She orders a Coke, even though she doesn’t drink soda, “but we’re in a bowling alley and it just feels right.” There’s chit-chat about how she used to come here as a teen with her drama club friends and a fake ID to belt out Pat Benatar's greatest hits on the nights the spot doubled as Mr. T.’s Bowl karaoke bar. She’s excited to talk, yes, but maybe not to bowl.

I consider that perhaps we should have resorted to one of those Beverly Hills Hotel lunches in so many celebrity profiles, when Brie steps up to the lane, tells me with a laugh to back up and give her room to roll. She brushes her chocolate brown hair over her shoulder, takes a few strides, and dips in a deep curtsy lunge while swinging the ball behind her. It sails out of her outstretched fingers and rolls—straight down the lane.

“That's my long con,” she says as she turns back to me, victorious. “I'm like,”—she takes her voice up to a girlish falsetto and blinks innocently, “I've never done this!”

Cut to forty-five minutes later, when the matter of breaking a tie feels as imperative to Brie as ensuring she says everything she wants to about staying hungry and working hard. Or maybe, this is her saying it. If she’s here, she’s going all-out.

The Alison who knew Highland Park Bowl by another name was a striver. Growing up in ’90s Pasadena, “I was not playing, like, ‘bride’ or ‘mommy,’” she remembers. She was auditioning for local theater productions at the Los Feliz Jewish Community Center. Toto in The Wizard of Oz was her gateway role; from then on out, acting was all she wanted to do. “It was wholesome in that I was not like, I'm gonna be a huge movie star, but I also would practice my Oscar speech in the bathroom,” she says.

According to her teenage logic, she could go from theater to a break in indie films or period pieces: “because those are the kinds of movies where they would cast unknowns.” In reality, she’d be auditioning while working as a party clown until her mid-twenties. Short films and a boisterous Hannah Montana cameo finally culminated in a double-booking on Community and Mad Men, sometimes filming one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Showing her comedic range on the former and dramatic chops on the latter opened doors where Brie gained more recognition and autonomy with each step—a SAG- and Golden Globe-nominated turn on the canceled-before-its time GLOW, to writing her first feature-length script, 2020’s Horse Girl, to independent films and limited series like Apples Never Fall.

From set to set, she built a reputation blending charisma and no-holds-barred dedication, helping her make friends like GLOW’s Betty Gilpin. “I remember wondering, why do I not feel intimidated by someone this strong and confident and relaxed in such an anxiety-provoking setting, like a set?” she says of their early days working together. “Even though she's young, her hours logged in this business are pretty impressive. But I think that to be around Ali is to be really comfortable. I kind of immediately realized this is a person that I'm going to learn from.”

As Brie was working her way up through Hollywood, she was also falling in love with her eventual co-collaborator in life and in work, actor Dave Franco. Their courtship and 2017 marriage went from strictly under wraps to fodder for tabloid relationship timelines and virality-bait videos, like reading each other thirsty tweets and taking couples’ quizzes.

Nothing about their affection is an act. Over a Zoom in late June, Franco tells me—hands clasped over his Hawaiian shirt and a permanent smile for all 27 minutes on the line—that in their 14 years together, every time they’ve been apart, they’ve sent one another a “mini love letter” each night before bed. “It really makes you focus on the other person and let them know in a unique way, every single night, how much they mean to you,” Franco says. He also says that she’s his favorite actress like he’s founder, president, and events director of her official fan club, listing her attributes without a hint of spousal obligation to do so. “She is an incredible dramatic actress. She is so funny. She’s so athletic and can bring that physicality to her roles. There's literally no genre that she can't do,” he says.

The pair didn’t professionally link up until their raunchy 2012 Funny or Die sketch. “I think, actually, early on in our relationship we had no desire to work together,” Brie says, sipping her Coke. “Early in your career, too, you're like, I want to prove myself and make my own name for myself.” But the creative chemistry was undeniable. They’d play a couple for a brief portion of The Disaster Artist in 2017. Franco would direct Brie in a horror for the short-term lease economy, 2020’s The Rental, and then again for the 2023 romantic comedy Somebody I Used to Know.

“We joke about being codependent, but I think we actually are very independent people,” Brie tells me when we hit pause on the bowling and sit down to chat. When they’re working on opposite coasts, or countries, “it's not like,”—here she throws her voice into a mock-yell, “Where's Dave?”

All their mutual public swooning makes their joint turn in Together so bizarrely, jarringly fun. They play Millie and Tim, a genre of couple we all know or have been halves of: They’ve been dating for a decade, but it seems like their shared history is all that’s keeping them together. Their careers are at odds, they know exactly which flaws to bring up in front of company for maximum hurt feelings, and they’re definitely not having sex anymore. When Millie gets a new teaching job, they move from the city to a tiny, secluded town in a bid to hit restart. With no one but each other to lean on and some sinister forces in the woods outside their home, romantic tropes like being totally inseparable and magnetically drawn toward one another are then pushed to their most literal, gasp-inducing interpretations.

Brie says Franco had opened up her appetite for horror, and they’d been looking for a project like Together when director Michael Shanks’s team reached out in 2022. “What's really unique about this movie is that the thing that's trying to get us, is inside of us,” she says. “It was this unique acting challenge to be fighting your own body.” Brie says they were both drawn to how codependency doesn’t just manifest in the script’s horror set pieces. It was also how Millie and Tim would butt heads even in dire circumstances. (If you’ve ever fought with a partner over directions, you might feel personally attacked by an argument over hiking seen in act one.)

The film premiered at Sundance in January to rave reviews and an instant bidding war for distribution rights. Neon acquired its worldwide release for $17 million—the biggest deal out of the festival this year. Shortly after, it faced a copyright infringement lawsuit concerning the story’s originality. According to Brie, in a written statement shared after our interview: "This is a sad reality of the business, unfortunately these types of claims come up all the time. Our screenwriter wrote the first draft of this script in 2019, a year before WME ever received the other script. We have an extensive paper trail, and we look forward to showing the court that these claims are frivolous.”

One thing is for certain: Shanks couldn’t have imagined a better actress to front his project than Brie. Her blend of comedic chops and dedication to the material meant the script sounded more natural— she improvised several lines that made their way into the final cut. She also did as much of her own stunt work as she could manage. When things like a 360-degree body contortion simply weren’t possible, she’d stretch her eyebrows and mouth into macabre expressions for scanning onto the actual contortionist’s body. “The whole time,” Shanks tells me over a Zoom from his office in Melbourne, Australia, “she was throwing herself into so much more of the film than I think would be expected of the lead actors.”

He means “throwing” literally. In one scene, the invisible string tying the couple together yanks on Millie so forcefully, she collides face-first with the glass door to their home office. A stunt double was supposed to handle the crash, but Brie just had to give it a bruise-inducing shot. Her take is what made it into the final cut.

Moments like these earned the project an unofficial title among the cast and crew, according to Shanks: “Torturing Dave and Alison.” Working on their most grossed-out scenes with little room for personal freedom—one day, Franco says, Brie was obligated to straddle him for a leg-numbing twelve hours—only made him more firm in his opinion: his wife is really the best actress. “There's nothing she won't do for the sake of the project to try to make it as great as it could possibly be,” he says.

I ask Brie if spending time inhabiting a couple at odds impacted their dynamic when it was time to wrap. “Dave jokes that the hardest part for this press tour is going to be convincing people that we actually have a good relationship,” Brie laughs. “I think we could not have done this movie if we didn't have a really healthy relationship. That would be its own horror movie.”

Brie ended up having a more positive souvenir from Together’s shoot: a new outlook. The entire film was shot in 21 days, rapid-fire by most studios’ standards. The actress took it as a sign she couldn’t waste a minute doubting herself on set. “Going into this job, I thought, there's no time for that bullshit. You know everything you need to know,” she says. “It was actually really freeing and really fun that I was like, there's no time to overthink anything, so don't. Let it rip, and Dave did the same. That's the mentality I want to have in life now.”

The Brie-Franco household—population: the couple and their two cats, Otis and Max—is currently in a quiet period. “We’re getting to a place of trying to find this nice balance between work and enjoying life together, and getting excited about growing older and getting even more cats together and moving even further into the wilderness,” Franco tells me. “Some people might say it's leaning even further into our codependency.”

But I suspect it would take a total ideas drought for Brie to stop creating—and even that might be a temporary setback. Even in a phase of life she describes as high artistry, lower pressure, she’s finding calls to explore new avenues in unlikely places. Weeks before we meet at Highland Park Bowl, Brie has a short break between Together’s first round of festival premieres and suiting up as the villain Evil-Lyn for Mattel’s Masters of the Universe adaptation shoot in London. She spends it on a stop by New York City, where she’ll cash in one of the most sought-after tickets on Broadway: the Tony-winning play Oh, Mary! where Gilpin is starring for a limited engagement.

Watching her friend inhabit an alt-history Mary Todd Lincoln onstage at the Lyceum Theatre, “I had chills. I was sobbing,” Brie says. Pride in her former costar morphed into inspiration for another “exciting frontier”: theater. I ask if she’s got her sights set on Broadway, should the right script come along. She sits up a little straighter before she answers: “It terrifies me, and it's why I think I should do it.”

To be clear, she doesn’t have concrete plans to go back to her community theater roots yet. She’s tied up with plenty of other film and TV projects as it is. She’ll pull on Annie Edison’s cardigans for a Community reboot film that’s in pre-production. She just signed on to lead Witness Protection, a thriller pilot for FX. She spent two weeks and a half in Kentucky filming The Revisionist, a “talky” indie drama, alongside Dustin Hoffman and Tom Sturridge.

Teaming up onscreen again with her husband isn’t out of the picture, but only when the time is right. “It’s certainly important to me to continue to do work by myself, and it's important to Dave too. I think also when we do work separately, we can bring back anything we learn to the work that we do together.” Brie smiles in the same ear-to-ear, totally smitten way her husband does when he talks about her. “I want to work with Dave for the rest of my life and be in love with him for the rest of my life.”

What about the birds’ eye view of her career? How does she think she’s being perceived? Franco tells me he loves that she’s “universally loved.” She’s a consistent crowd-favorite no matter her project, but I wonder if that reads the same as the industry recognition she earned in her prestige TV era. Brie tells me, “it feels weird to comment on it now, like in the middle of it.” For the first time, she’s addressing the straw of her Coke instead of me. “But also I feel like I've gone through phases of really high highs and low lows and learning who I was, and heartbreak and awkward moments and exciting moments, and now can settle into a lower stakes version of the whole thing.”

She admits she may have piled on the self-pressure in the earlier years to have a certain type of career—one where she wasn’t just consistently working, but also becoming known. (Gwyneth Paltrow’s 1999 Oscar win was a formative example for teen Alison.) Experience means she can keep dreaming big without worrying who will notice. She says she’s guided more by how it feels to make the movie or the show than whatever the outcome could be. Critical acclaim doesn’t hurt, though: In the lead-up to Together’s release, Brie’s Instagram stories were a near-daily ode to the film’s stellar rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

She’s surprised herself even more by getting involved behind the camera. Writing has become her self-described “secret weapon.” When she produces independent films, she says, she wants to be involved from start to finish from now on. Directing an episode of GLOW morphed into directing an episode of a Disney Plus series. She likens taking the lead of an entire set as a “fear factor” experience. She’d shadowed directors and went to a seminar and read books—but nothing could compare to learning on the job. After she ripped off the proverbial Band-Aid, she says she realized more than she initially thought she knew.

“I think women carry a lot of self-doubt and we have a desire to make everything perfect before we attempt something, or we learn everything we can learn,” she says. “You want to really check the boxes and go, am I prepared for this? And at a certain point you have to just take the leap and believe in yourself.”

She’d felt ready to jump and hope the net would appear when the COVID pandemic and SAG-AFTRA strikes happened one after the other. They set projects already in production back by months, reshuffled budgets, and pushed Brie’s directing plans temporarily to the side. “It’s taken me five years, basically, to build back up the confidence and desire to want to do that and to find the right thing.”

I waited for Brie to bring up what I suspected would be that right thing. On Together’s Sundance press circuit, she’d sprinkled mentions of working with the “dark bubblegum” writer Alice Stanley Jr. on an upcoming script. Looking around and concluding a random entertainment reporter isn’t embedded in the bowling parties around us, she decides now is the time to make an addendum: She plans on directing the feature-length film, too. “While we were writing it,” she says, “I felt like I was writing it to direct it. I could see every shot in my head.”

As far as I can tell, we’re not at risk of getting scooped, so I press for more. All she’s ready to reveal, in a slightly lower voice, is that she’s still playing in the horror-comedy sandbox, albeit with a “female-forward, very fun energy.” After Together’s trial by entanglement, she recognizes diving head-first into creating her own horror story is a sign of character development. She used to be scared to watch them; now she’s writing one.

Brie isn’t chasing horror because it’s the fastest-growing film category, and she’s not directing her own because women like The Substance’s Coralie Fargeat are attracting awards-season nods. Earning the sort of pop culture credit bestowed upon actresses with long careers and an atmosphere of underappreciation hovering around them isn’t part of her calculus. “The way I choose roles and things like that, it’s very seldom about the industry’s perception or even the arc of my career,” she says. She’s proud of being a genre generalist and trying several jobs on the call sheet. “The older I get, the more I realize that the heart of everything is just trusting yourself. I’m running at the things that excite me.”

A flashing-all caps alert on our scoreboard tells us we have FOUR MINUTES LEFT. We laugh at the lane’s demand to get back on task, but we agree: Her date with Dave can wait if needed; we’ll keep playing until there’s a winner. I’m not surprised when our momentary tie is broken by Brie’s final turn, where she knocks down eight pins like she knows it’s the best ending for my story. She is a writer, after all.

Photographer: Jonny Marlow | Stylist: Sue Choi | Hair Stylist: Clariss Rubenstein | Makeup Artist: Molly Greenwald | Manicurist: Stephanie Stone | Set Design: Isaac Aaron | DP: Sam Miron Creative Director: Alexa Wiley | Entertainment Director: Neha Prakash | Producer: Lindsay Ferro | Video Producer: Kellie Scott

If you know where to look, Netflix has everything you'd ever want to watch, from edge-of-your-seat thrillers and swoon-worthy rom-coms to epic period pieces and emotional K-dramas. Let me be your guide—who has spent way too much time on the platform over the past 18 years—to the absolute must-watch series to add to your watchlist. Below, read on for our list of the best Netflix original shows of all time.

'Bojack Horseman' (2014–2020)

Netflix has built an excellent slate of animated shows over the years, from Big Mouth to Arcane to Blue-Eyed Samurai, but Bojack is one of my favorite shows that Netflix has ever made, period. The severely underrated, satirical dark comedy stars the titular horse (voiced by Will Arnett), the former star of a '90s sitcom who's now washed up and miserable. Bojack's failed attempt at redemption is enough for an excellent series by itself, but this is truly an ensemble show with several beloved characters, including the workaholic Princess Carolyn, the ever-peppy Mr. Peanut Butter, and Todd Chavez, one of the best instances of asexual representation in TV history. Plus, though some of the episodes will definitely make you cry, the running animal gags will put a smile back on your face.

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'Bridgerton' (2020– )

While the wait between seasons can be quite annoying, there's a reason why so many of us viewers are eager to return to the Ton every two years. Shondaland's adaptation of Julia Quinn's romance series transformed the novels from traditional, low-key problematic Regency stories to diverse, needle-drop-filled (still occasionally problematic) sagas that balance steamy sexual tension and modern commentary on the marriage plot. Plus, we'd be remiss not to include the show that catapulted Regé-Jean Page, Simone Ashley, Jonathan Bailey, and Nicola Coughlan to mainstream fame. (Bonus watch: Queen Charlotte is a bit more of a downer, but an excellent addition to the Bridgerton elders's lore.)

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'The Crown' (2016–2023)

We at Marie Claire are well-versed in the royals, so it's no surprise that Netflix's monumental fictionalized telling of the late Queen Elizabeth II's reign made the list. Over seven years, six seasons, and three casts, creator Peter Morgan covered 60 years of the Queen's life, surprising novices and impressing experts with its take on the British Royal Family and major historical events of the 20th century. A special shout-out to Emma Corrin and Elizabeth Debicki for their heartbreaking portrayals of the People's Princess.

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'The Haunting of Hill House' (2018)

Mike Flanagan was the king of televised horror during his five-year tenure at Netflix, and many of the streamer's best shows are part of the "Flanaverse." Fans may have their favorites, but in my opinion, none of the later shows surpass the first terrifying miniseries, set in a haunted house with so many ghosts that spotting them became a top-tier Easter egg hunt. Flanagan's reimagining of the Shirley Jackson novel is both a bone-chilling tale and a heart-wrenching family drama that's become an annual rewatch for me every Halloween. (If you're obsessed with Victoria Pedretti from You, make sure to watch her breakout role in Hill House.)

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'Lupin' (2021– )

The hardest dilemma of this list: Which of Netflix's international thieves would nab the spot on this list? Though Money Heist came in close, I had to choose Lupin, a.k.a. the James Bond the world truly needs. For anyone who hasn't checked out the French-language series yet, Assane Diop (Omar Sy) is a master of disguise who conducts jaw-dropping heists inspired by the literary character Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc. As with many great stories, Assane's true motivation is a mission of revenge, which often comes into conflict with his obligations as a (not-that-great) father.

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'Mindhunter' (2017–2019)

Filmmaker David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac) mastered the serial killer drama long before he made his way over to Netflix with Mindhunter—but the project might just be his magnum opus. Based on the true-crime book of the same name, about an FBI agent's experience interviewing infamous murderers and launching the Bureau's criminal profiling, it follows fictionalized agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany ), as well as psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), as they sit down with Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, and more. It's every bit unnerving, but the genius, icy writing and compelling performances will have you on the edge of your seat. We're still holding out for the show to continue in some form.

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'Orange is the New Black' (2013–2019)

Orange is the New Black is one of Netflix's earliest original programs, and it is a defining proof of its vision for the future of television. Though the series ostensibly centers on fish-out-of-water inmate Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), the show's vast yet self-contained scope allowed it to delve into each of the excellent supporting characters's backstories and arcs throughout seven seasons. Jenji Kohan's series was legendary for its multi-ethnic and LGBTQ+ representation that dispelled harmful stereotypes, as well as its nuanced treatment of the many societal inequities surrounding mass incarceration. It's a complicated legacy, but you can't deny the show as an acclaimed step in TV's evolution.

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'The Queen's Gambit' (2020)

Netflix's first-ever Emmy win for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series went to this stunning 1950s and '60s-set drama about the fictional chess prodigy Beth Harmon (played by Anya Taylor-Joy). This show is a marvel both stylistically and narratively, sucking viewers into tense chess matches and making us vicariously feel Harmon's obsession, determination, and brilliance. Though Beth's prone to self-destruction, the miniseries about her is nothing other than confident and masterfully controlled the entire way through.

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'Sex Education' (2019–2023)

The young-adult series is a contentious subgenre for Netflix; while some are iconic—honorable mention to Heartstopper, Never Have I Ever, and American Vandal—many are regrettably cut short. (Again, American Vandal.) But Sex Education stands out for balancing bawdy humor and literal sex education with uplifting coming-of-age plots for its many characters. There's a reason many of its cast members have blown up since the series—see Simone Ashley in Bridgerton, Emma Mackey, Connor Swindells, and Ncuti Gatwa in Barbie and beyond.

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'Stranger Things' (2016–2025)

It's hard to imagine a Netflix subscriber who didn't get sucked into Stranger Things mania at some point in the series's run over nine years. Whether you were a day one devotee falling straight into '80s nostalgia (and screaming "Justice for Barb!") or a later convert obsessing over Vecna theories, Stranger Things is a thrilling coming-of-age adventure that balances suburban drama with genuinely creepy monster moments. It was also the first series to show off the power of Netflix's franchising arm, which means it's more than partly to thank for the streamer's Disneyfication with immersive experiences (for better or for worse).

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'When Life Gives You Tangerines' (2025)

Yes, Squid Game is the biggest Netflix series of all time, but it's not the best K-drama the streaming giant has ever made. (Don't worry, it's still in the Top 5.) That honor goes to When Life Gives You Tangerines, the multi-generational epic that premiered earlier this year and became an instant classic. Tangerines follows one family over 60 years, and each episode warms, soothes, and breaks your heart in equal measure. Trust me, even if you pride yourself on staying dry-faced through the saddest movies, you will be sobbing at some point in the 16-episode run.

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'When They See Us' (2019)

Ava DuVernay's landmark miniseries When They See Us shows the power of television to raise awareness of historic and societal injustices. The unflinching portrayal of the Central Park Five's wrongful conviction for the 1989 assault of Trisha Meili doesn't just focus on the legal proceedings, but also shows how the arrests had a long-lasting impact on the wrongfully accused boys's lives and those of their families and loved ones. Every fictionalized true-crime series should take notes from this show, especially in its scenes showing the former teens struggling to adjust to life after release.

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After matching in episode 1 of the Netflix reality series, the two navigate some pretty big ups and downs tied to their shared connection and how they should explore things with other people. They fared well in some of the compatibility challenges, but fought hard over the outcome of a kissing contest. Louis questioned if Sandy truly liked him or simply tolerated him, and Sandy found herself wondering what would happen if her Ultimatum trial husband, J.R., came back into the picture.

Did these hurdles make their relationship stronger? Or break them for good? Read on for everything we know about Louis and Sandy’s journey on Perfect Match season 3 and where they are now.

What happened between Sandy and Louis on 'Perfect Match' season 3?

When Sandy heads into the villa, she says she wants someone “smoking hot” but also with “depth”—a bad boy with a soft side. She finds it in Louis, who admits he’s “a bit of a menace,” but one with a warm heart.

Though they’re happy together after matching, neither rules out exploring other options. Sandy chats with Carrington (Love Island USA) when he comes through the villa, but tells him she and Louis have a good thing going and their connection is strong. And Louis admits he was nervous about having new guys come into the house, but also doesn’t object when AD and Ollie send him on a date with Alex (Temptation Island): “I like a little bit of toxic jealousy,” he says with a laugh.

This leads to their first major source of strife: Louis tells Sandy that Alex is the kind of woman he’s dated in the past, and he doesn’t know where his head is at. As he’s taking time to get to know Alex better, Sandy frets that her match likes “new shiny objects,” but it remains to be seen if this new woman can “handle” him. Louis overhears this and takes it to mean that she’s only tolerating his personality, which upsets him. She swears that isn’t the case, but says his flirty demeanor makes it hard to fully let him in. He ultimately decides that while he’s intrigued by Alex, he doesn't want to lose the connection that he and Sandy have.

Those feelings are tested by the kissing challenge, when all the participants had to kiss each other while blindfolded and wearing headphones. Louis rates Sandy’s kiss a 10, while Sandy only gives his a 9—and ranked Clayton (The Bachelor) a 10. This leads to another fight, because Louis deliberately didn’t put effort into the kissing challenge but is annoyed that she did.

While in the boardroom, Sandy sees temptation in the form of J.R., with whom she did a trial marriage on The Ultimatum, and makes the chaotic choice to bring her ex into the house—both to make Louis sweat a bit and to see if she and J.R. have any unfinished business. But Louis eventually apologizes for being immature, and Sandy decides to keep her relationship with J.R. in the past. “The past few days have really opened my eyes to what I have with Louis. I’m catching feelings and they’re just getting stronger and stronger,” she said.

So are these two actually on solid ground now? They work well together in the pole challenge, but then they find themselves at odds again about flirting with other people in the villa. Louis is bothered that Sandy is talking to Jalen (Too Hot to Handle), so he decides to flirt with Olivia (Temptation Island) as payback. Naturally, this leads to another argument: Louis tells Sandy that seeing her with other guys makes him question if her feelings for him are genuine. Sandy is hurt that he wouldn’t trust her intentions, counters that he’s done “way more of that stuff,” and walks off crying.

Louis says her chats make him question things, and she reminds him that she could have sent herself on a date with anyone while she was in the boardroom, including her ex, and didn’t. The talk goes late, so while Sandy is still unhappy that Louis has the “audacity” to question her having conversations with other guys when he’s doing the exact same thing, they decide to match and keep the conversation going—but it doesn’t really feel like a loved-up commitment.

Things get even messier at the guys’s mixer when Louis goes full “what happens on vacation stays on vacation.” While Sandy is telling people that she and Louis are “really close” now, he’s kissing Alex during a game of Truth or Dare and again in the pool.

Back at the villa, Louis’s cagey behavior makes it obvious something happened, and when Sandy asks him what’s going on, he comes clean, surprised and embarrassed that he’d do this to her. Despite telling him she felt disrespected by his behavior at the mixer, she says that he apologized and told the truth, so he’s still her match. Louis steps up and plans a romantic date by the pool for the two of them, saying, “You deserve to be treated like this.” Sandy is touched that he’s showing her a deeper side of himself, but then they’re thrown another curveball when she’s sent on one final date with J.R.

Her Ultimatum ex makes a pitch for them to rekindle their romance, saying she deserves an “equal” and vowing not to do what Louis did to her at the mixer. Sandy admits spending one-on-one time with J.R. brought up old feelings, and while she cares for Louis, she’s also not naive to what he’s like. However, Sandy tells J.R. that they already had their time and that she can't deny her connection with Louis. Even though the stress of constantly defending the relationship seems to be getting to Sandy, she and Louis match again for the final time.

When the entire cast reunites for the finale ceremony, Sandy and Louis argue that they're the perfect match because they have chosen each other even after their messy, challenge-filled journey. Both Alex and J.R. call out Louis for his behavior at the boys's mixer, but Sandy points out that he was honest and confessed outright. Louis even reveals that he's planning to move to L.A., removing the long-distance issue.

Unfortunately, Louis and Sandy get knocked out of the running for the season's grand prize when host Nick Lachey adds in one last compatibility challenge. (Hasn't this season been long enough?) The pair gets eliminated when they give different answers to the question, "What's a flaw that your man has, but one you can live with?" Louis says "being loud," but Sandy puts "his attention span and ADHD," so they do not prove themselves to be the perfect match.

Are Sandy and Louis still together after 'Perfect Match' season 3?

Following the finale's ending, both Sandy and Louis confirmed to Elite Daily that their relationship did not last. According to the couple, the pair did go on a joint couple's trip with winners Lucy and Daniel after filming, but Sandy confirmed that she and Louis both left the show with zero expectations.

"We were very real about certain things: We live in different countries; there’s a bit of an age gap; we are working on different things in our lives," she told the outlet. "Things just fizzled out. We’re still friends, everything’s good, but I think reality sunk in, and we definitely are at two very different places in our life. I just don’t think that things could realistically work where we’re at right now."

Louis added, "We sort of came to a mutual agreement with where it’s going to go. The way that my lifestyle is and the goals that I have set, it’s hard for me to focus on someone that’s not in the same country. We are still cool. We see each other. It’s still the same vibe, but I think where my life is heading, it didn’t make sense."

As for where Louis's life headed following his split with Sandy, the 24-year-old went public with a different relationship before his season even aired. On July 31, 2025—the night before Perfect Match premiered—he walked the red carpet for the premiere of the horror film Weapons alongside an entirely different reality star. The Perfect Match star was spotted with none other than Love Island USA season 7's Huda Mustafa.

For anyone who somehow missed Love Island mania earlier this summer, Huda had the most contentious arc of this year's installment, from her many crash-outs with ex Jeremiah Brown to becoming a season 7 finalist alongside Chris Seeley...and then breaking up with him during the finale. Aside from the carpet debut, neither she nor Louis has addressed their relationship, so we don't know how they met. Although it seems Louis became friends with LIUSA season 6 finalist Miguel Harichi relatively recently.

Since Louis and Huda's debut, Louis has been called out for spoiling his Perfect Match season 3 coupling, which is admittedly on poor form for a reality star. During an appearance on "The Viall Files" podcast, his co-star Rachel Recchia said that his actions "affect the whole cast."

"It’s literally airing—we have what, maybe two weeks. It feels, like, a little selfish," she said. "Sandy and him have such a good connection on the show. Now people are kinda seeing things like, 'Oh, what's going on now?'"

Sandy hasn't spoken out on Louis's new relationship. However, when asked about cast members "spoiling the season" during an August 7 Instagram Q&A, she promised she would be "talking about this soon and laying it all out."

She added, "In the meantime, the show is pure comedy and you will be surprised how it ends, so def keep watching."

Things get off to a good start between these two on the Netflix reality hit, and they’re the first pair we see officially match—but when Lucy doesn’t rank Daniel highest in a kissing challenge, it sparks a humongous fight that leaves Lucy in tears. Newcomers to the villa also introduce competition and a questioning of motives that test their true compatibility.

So, are these two truly a perfect match? And are they still together now? Let’s run down everything we know about Lucy and Daniel’s relationship on Perfect Match season 3 and after the show so far.

What happened between Lucy and Daniel on 'Perfect Match' season 3?

Both entered the villa in the opening episode and spent some time getting to know a few other hopefuls; Daniel flirted with Juliette (Siesta Key), and Lucy with Clayton (The Bachelor), but they ultimately shared that they were into one another and decided to make things official.

“I’m in my own little world with Lucy, I forget who else is around me because I’m literally just focused on her. And to be honest, I’m happy with that.” Daniel gushes. He’s happy with her, and though he’s tempted somewhat when Alex (Temptation Island) enters the villa, he and Lucy choose to stay together.

Whatever calm these two had, though, completely imploded after episode 3’s compatibility challenge: All the couples had to wear blindfolds and headphones while kissing one another, and then ranked those makeouts. Daniel ranked Lucy highest, giving her a 10, but Lucy only gave him a 9…and ranked Ollie’s kiss higher. Daniel accuses Lucy of making him look like a fool in front of everyone, and their argument leaves her in tears; she knows she embarrassed him, but swears she didn’t do it on purpose. Ultimately, he decides that being upset over it means he really cares for her.

Lucy considers Scott (Love Island USA) as a potential suitor, but ultimately decides he’s too young for her. (He’s 23, she’s 28.) Daniel says it’s a “hard balance” trying to play it cool while she explores her options, but he’s still happy with his match.

The pair score a big win when they ace a difficult compatibility challenge: working together to drop balls into the water while swinging overhead on a pole. They’re rewarded with the most chaotic boardroom visit of the season so far: choosing two couples to pair up with new singles, and those participants’s current partners have to leave the villa.

The introduction of new faces—two men, two women—upends their happiness again, because Daniel takes issue with how “loudly” Lucy was chatting with Ray (Love Island USA). He accuses her of now embarrassing him a second time, and again Lucy walks away in tears. She doesn’t want to be with someone who’s embarrassed by her, but also doesn’t want to blow up their relationship over one argument. So they match again, but say they still have more to talk about and want to continue that conversation.

The two part ways for their respective mixers, and things get wild at the guys’s party. Daniel kisses both Olivia and Juliette during a game of Truth or Dare, taking things even further by licking Olivia’s thigh on another dare, and kissing her again outside the game.

At first, he only comes clean to Lucy about the kissing and leaves out the part about licking Olivia’s thigh. Eventually, she finds out about this from AD, who saw it happen. She’s shocked and mortified, and Daniel knows he went too far, saying he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make it work. At first, it seems like Lucy is over it (“I know he cares, but I’ve worked bloody damn hard on myself to not just accept shitty behavior,” she says), but she winds up deciding to give him another chance. Still, she makes him sleep on the couch.

Lucy and Daniel were refreshingly drama-free for the final round of matches. They briefly discuss trust issues during their final date, with Lucy mentioning how he did her dirty, but he made it clear that he didn't want to walk away from her. "I want to be better for you, not only for myself, but for you, because I care about you," he says. "No matter what that is or what that means, I know I wanna try for you."

Did Lucy and Daniel win 'Perfect Match season 3?

Like previous years, season 3 of Perfect Match ends by bringing the entire cast back for a grilling season, where everyone could say their peace about everything that happened. Daniel gets called out for lying, but he takes responsibility and says that hurting her made him realize he cared about her. Meanwhile, Lucy says that she appreciated that he challenged her to share how she felt instead of staying bottled up after arguments.

Then, instead of going straight to a cast vote for the winner, host Nick Lachey pulled out one last compatibility challenge! (Hasn't this season been long enough???) It's a classic elimination-style newlywed game, and the final two couples standing, who move forward to the vote, are AD and Ollie and Lucy and Daniel. (A.K.A. the two most likely couples to win even without this random extra hurdle.)

Finally, the votes were taken, and the winners of Perfect Match season 3 are...Lucy and Daniel! After the credits roll, we get an extra confessional from a happy, happy Lucy, where she reveals that she was applying to be an air hostess at the time, which would hopefully mean lots of chances to see Daniel.

Unfortunately, that didn't all pan out.

Are Lucy and Daniel still together after 'Perfect Match' season 3?

As the title card reveals at the end of the Perfect Match season 3 finale, Lucy and Daniel broke up weeks after winning the competition. (They didn't even make it on the all-expenses-paid prize trip.)

Speaking to Elite Daily, Lucy revealed that it became clear soon after filming that long distance did not help the pair's existing issues. "Straight after filming, we went on a holiday in Cancún, and it was quite obvious there were a few things that we were just very different on," she told the outlet. "When we went back to our respective countries, it was the time difference, and we have very different lifestyles. The long distance was quite hard, especially with my job at the time. I was working in a club, and I think that was really hard for him. He wanted to know where I was and what I was doing a lot of the time. And it was just so early on that we realized this was going to be too difficult."

Despite the split, Lucy confirmed to Swoon that there is "no bad blood" between her and Daniel, and the pair still follow each other on Instagram. So, all's well that ends well.

Amber Desiree “AD” Smith (Love Is Blind season 6) and Ollie Sutherland (Love Is Blind: UK season 1) were drawn to each other from the start and became one of this season’s most enduring matches, with Ollie saying early on that she had “all the signs of a genuine partner.” They survived compatibility challenges and navigated tensions in the boardroom—and when AD was sent out on a date with another man, the added competition tested but reaffirmed their commitment to one another. But one of the show’s most chaotic twists put that seemingly strong bond in jeopardy.

So where do things stand with these two lovebirds? And do we know about what comes next for them? Read on to find out everything we know about AD and Ollie’s time on Perfect Match season 3 (and whether they may have stayed together after the cameras stopped rolling).

What happened between AD and Ollie on 'Perfect Match' season 3?

As we said, these two had eyes for one another from the start. AD and Ollie were both part of the first crop of romantic hopefuls to enter the villa, and chatted each other up almost immediately, thanks in part to their shared reality TV "résumé (“I got to take care of my LIB people,” AD said.)

Their connection only grew from there, and by day two, AD was already talking about their “insane” physical chemistry and how he matched her “vibe.” Ollie, meanwhile, admitted that he’d expected to keep his feelings out of the competition, but their connection took him by surprise.

The first test of their relationship came during a trip to the boardroom, when tensions rose over Ollie wanting to bring Alex (Temptation Island) into the villa for a date with one of the other guys, which made AD wonder if he was interested in her for himself. Separately, Ollie admits he finds Alex attractive and was excited to meet her, but she’s unable to tempt him away, and Ollie and AD commit to each other once again. The pair also ranked each other highest in the blindfolded kissing challenge, further cementing that they’re in sync.

Then, Sandy and Clayton send AD on a date with J.R. (The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On), and now AD is the one curious to see what happens when a distraction comes into play. The two seem to have a great time on their pottery date, and it turns out they have a lot in common (including that they’re both Scorpios). So when they return to the villa holding hands, Ollie starts sweating. Despite the risk that he could get hurt, he becomes vulnerable and makes his feelings clear to AD—that it’s been her from the start, and he feels more connected to her than he did to his fiancée on Love Is Blind: UK. Amber affirms that she loves their connection and chooses him once again.

But then, this romance gets completely upended by a boardroom twist: Ollie is chosen to go on a date, and it means AD needs to leave the villa. Her “heart is shattered” by this turn of events. Ollie doesn’t want to see her go, but when his two new dates show up (Justine from Love Island USA season 2, and Olivia from Temptation Island), he’s suddenly…not quite as upset. He and Justine ultimately match, and while he says he was “fairly certain it was AD,” now Justine has him feeling “not so sure.”

All this leads to the gender-separated mixers, where matched-up participants can chat with the singles without their partners around—and, because AD is now unattached, she’s one of the attendees. She and Ollie immediately link back up, which means he recuses himself from the shenanigans the other guys get into that day, but when she asks what happened between him and Justine, he downplays it. Later, she goes directly to Justine, and the truth comes out: They kissed on the first night after they matched—outing Ollie as a liar and breaking AD’s trust in him.

Ollie knows he screwed up by not telling AD the truth about Justine, and has to own the consequences. He apologizes and breaks things off with Justine. AD agrees to give him another chance, but their reunion bliss is short-lived: Later that night, in their room, Ollie starts an argument over the fact that AD spoke to another man who was interested in her, which she points out is hypocritical after he kissed Justine and lied about it. “If you’re saying this is disrespect,” she tells him, “then what the fuck did you do to me?”

In the morning, Ollie admits he didn’t need to get as worked up as he did and apologizes for overreacting, and while AD thinks she’s still trying to heal from “the betrayal and the lies,” she hopes that they’re building a strong foundation for themselves. The pair sail through the final set of matches, and Ollie sets up a cute candle-lit moment with roses, to show AD how she's his "only match." During their final date, Ollie says that he can't imagine not knowing AD, and they make plans for Ollie to visit AD once she moves to L.A.

Did AD and Ollie win 'Perfect Match' season 3?

Season 3 of Perfect Match ends with the finale ceremony, where the entire cast gathers to say their piece before they vote for the winning couple. Understandably, Justine calls Ollie out for lying, and though Ollie takes responsibility, Justine doubles down that she doesn't want AD to be played. AD responds that she feels really confident about the steps they're taking to rebuild trust, and the pair say they're locked in.

Before they can get to the vote, host Nick Lachey throws in one more compatibility challenge: a newlywed game where only the top two couples are eligible for voting. AD and Ollie make it to the final vote, alongside Lucy and Daniel, but ultimately Lucy and Daniel received the cast's votes and the all-expenses-paid getaway. Ollie says in a confessional that he isn't mad at losing, and makes a bad joke about returning for next season before he corrects himself and says he's going to marry AD.

Are AD and Ollie still together after 'Perfect Match' season 3?

Long before Perfect Match airs, fans learned that AD and Ollie's relationship withstood the test of long distance and reality TV mayhem. During the Love Is Blind season 8 reunion, which aired in March earlier this year, they revealed that they’re engaged, making them the first alums of different Love Is Blind editions to find love together.

“Even as early on as when we were on Perfect Match, I noticed that we were having the deeper conversations, the more important conversations, talking about shared values and similar outlooks on life,” Ollie told Love Is Blind hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey during the reunion. “I think that really laid the groundwork and the foundation for the beautiful relationship we have now.”

And the good news kept coming: In May, they announced they’re expecting a baby. “I’m so blessed, and I get to do this with such an amazing partner,” AD shared in a July interview. “We’re on this journey together, and we’re just so excited about our little girl. She’ll be here in November, and it’s been amazing.”

In an interview with PEOPLE following the season 3 finale, AD and Ollie opened up about the period of their relationship between leaving the show and getting engaged.

"Ollie was in time out for a while," she told the outlet. "He had a lot of making up to do, but we focused on intentionality in our relationship and just being open and honest with each other about what we wanted out of our own personal lives and what we wanted as a couple."

"And everything we said we were going to do, we did," she continued. "And he's been so open and honest and transparent with me from since then. So that's all I can really ask for."

Ollie added, "They say the best form of apology is changed behavior, and from that moment, I've done a complete 180 in terms of how I am in every aspect of a relationship, in terms of just openness and transparency and just honesty. And just everything I did wrong, and I'll do right, essentially."

As for what's next, the pair explained that they're in the early stages of wedding planning—having what AD calls "wedding thoughts, not wedding plans"—as they enjoy the fiancée stage. And of course, they're getting ready to welcome their child later this year.

"[I'm] so excited. Obviously nervous as well, but that just speaks to how excited I am and how much it means to me," Ollie said of becoming a dad. "Obviously, I'm nervous because I want to get it right, but I'm sure, as a team, we're going to be amazing parents, and we just can't wait to meet our little girl."

Premiering on August 1, 2025, Perfect Match season 3 expands beyond the NRU to include stars of other reality shows, including a longtime Siesta Key star, a Bachelor and a Bachelorette (who had one of the franchise's most notorious breakups), and, yes, several Love Island USA alums. Below, read on for everything you need to know about the stacked cast of Perfect Match, including the TV personalities's most memorable moments and whether they'll run into their exes.

Amber "AD" Smith

Age: 34

Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts/Charlotte, North Carolina

Previous Show: Love Is Blind season 6

Best Known For: Being left at the altar on LIB...and finding love on this very season of Perfect Match!

Instagram: @amberdesiree

TikTok: @itsamberdesiree

Alex Zamora

Age: 26

Previous Show: Temptation Island on Netflix

Best Known For: Being part of Brion's infamous threesome

Instagram: @iamalexzamora

TikTok: @alexzamoraofficial

Carrington Rodriguez

Age: 28

Hometown: Bitburg, Germany/Salt Lake City, Utah

Previous Show: Love Island USA season 2, Love Island Games season 1

Best Known For: Coming in fourth place on LIUSA

Instagram: @c_rod003

TikTok: @carringtonrodriguez

Clayton Echard

Age: 32

Hometown: Eureka, Missouri

Previous Show: The Bachelor season 26

Best Known For: Being one of "the worst Bachelors in history;" confessing love to three women on the show

Previous Connections: Dated and dumped Rachel Recchia on The Bachelor

Instagram: @claytonechard

TikTok: @clayton.echard

Cody Wright

Age: 31

Hometown: South Carolina

Previous Show: Temptation Island on Netflix

Best Known For: Revealing his favorite sex act near the start of the season

Instagram: @codywright3

TikTok: @codyswright

Daniel Perfetto

Age: 29

Hometown: Ontario, Canada

Previous Show: Dated & Related

Best Known For: Looking for love alongside his sister

Instagram: @danielperfetto_

TikTok: @danielperfetto

Freddie Powell

Age: 33

Hometown: Bolton, England

Previous Show: Love Is Blind UK season 1

Best Known For: Being a heartthrob funeral director; saying "I don't" at the altar

Instagram: @freddieppowell

TikTok: @freddieppowell

Hannah Burns

Age: 24

Hometown: Scottsdale, Arizona

Previous Show: The Mole season 2

Best Known For: Having a showmance with Battle Camp's Tony Castellanos

Instagram: @hannahburnns

TikTok: @hannahburnns

Jalen Brown

Age: 27

Hometown: Florida

Previous Show: Too Hot to Handle season 6

Best Known For: Tempting eventual winner Bri Balram

Instagram: @jalenolomu

TikTok: @jalenolomu

J.R. Warren

Age: 34

Hometown: Southern, New Jersey

Previous Show: The Ultimatum season 3

Best Known For: Getting way too close to his trial wife, Sandy Gallagher, before breaking up with Zaina Sesay

Previous Connections: See above.

Instagram: @_jrwarren

TikTok: @jrwarren_

Juliette Porter

Age: 28

Hometown: Sarasota, Florida

Previous Show: Siesta Key seasons 1-5

Best Known For: Constantly being the center of the drama

Instagram: @julietteporter

TikTok: @juliettep0rter

Justine Joy Ndiba

Age: 32

Hometown: Democratic Republic of the Congo/Rockaway, New Jersey

Previous Show: Love Island USA season 2, Love Island Games season 1

Best Known For: Winning both of her seasons of Love Island

Instagram: @justinejoy

TikTok: @justinejoy

Louis Russell

Age: 24

Hometown: Hampshire, England

Previous Show: Too Hot to Handle seasons 5 and 6, Battle Camp

Best Known For: Breaking all of Lana's rules for two seasons in a row; having a showmance with Bri Balram on Battle Camp

Instagram: @louis_russell

TikTok: @louisrussell_

Lucy Syed

Age: 29;

Hometown: London, England

Previous Show: Too Hot to Handle season 6

Best Known For: Becoming a solo runner-up after a rough breakup on THTH

Instagram: @lucy_syed

TikTok: @lucy_syed

Madison Errichiello

Age: 28

Hometown: Rural Indiana/Minneapolis, Minnesota

Previous Show: Love Is Blind season 8

Best Known For: Having a dramatic love triangle before leaving the pods single

Instagram: @mads.err

Olivia Rae

Age: 30

Hometown: Las Vegas, Nevada

Previous Show: Temptation Island on Netflix

Instagram: @imoliviarae

TikTok: @imoliviaraee

Ollie Sutherland

Age: 33

Hometown: London, England

Previous Show: Love Is Blind UK season 1

Best Known For: Being left at the altar on LIB...and finding love on this very season of Perfect Match!

Instagram: @ollie1sutherland

TikTok: @ollie1sutherland

Quori-Tyler "QT" Bullock

Age: 27

Hometown: Los Angeles, California

Previous Show: The Circle season 6, Battle Camp season 1

Best Known For: Being an admitted "puppet master," coming in third place on The Circle

Instagram: @quorityler

TikTok: @quorityler

Rachel Recchia

Age: 29

Hometown: Chicago, Illinois/Clermont, Florida

Previous Show: The Bachelor season 26, The Bachelorette season 19, Bachelor in Paradise season 9

Best Known For: Being dumped by Clayton Echard on The Bachelor; being half of the double Bachelorette season with Gabby Windey

Previous Connections: See above.

Instagram: @pilot.rachel

TikTok: @pilot.rachel

Ray Gantt

Age: 29

Hometown: New Jersey

Previous Show: Love Island USA season 1, Love Island Games season 1

Best Known For: Coming in third place on LIUSA

Instagram: @raygantt

TikTok: @raygantt

Sandy Gallagher

Age/Hometown: 29; Orange County, California

Previous Show: The Ultimatum season 3

Best Known For: Getting way too close to her trial husband, J.R. Warren, before breaking up with Nick Tramontin

Previous Connections: See above.

Instagram: @sandy_gal

TikTok: @sandyygal

Scott van-der-Sluis

Age: 24

Hometown: North Wales

Previous Show: Love Island UK season 10, Love Island USA season 5, Love Island Games season 1

Best Known For: Being a Love Island franchise regular

Instagram: @scottvds17

TikTok: @scottvds17

But who came up with this sassy, on-trend anthropomorphic elephant? One of the people responsible for Big Ellie is Shana Stephenson, the Chief Brand Officer for the Liberty and this week's guest on the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk". Stephenson chats with editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike about the inspiration behind Ellie and the cultural phenomenon that the mascot has become.

Stephenson began working with the Liberty in 2018, just before the team moved from Westchester to Brooklyn. Before their brief stint in Westchester, the Liberty had long called Madison Square Garden home.

“We had a mascot prior to Ellie, named Maddie. Maddie was a lovable golden retriever—and Maddie could dance, too,” Stephenson says. “So it’s not like Maddie was corny or wack. Like, Maddie was dope.” But Maddie was named after Madison Square Garden, and bringing her to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center didn’t feel right. “That created an opportunity for us to introduce a new mascot.”

The Liberty’s CEO, Keia Clarke, came across a story about how, when the Brooklyn Bridge was built, P.T. Barnum led herds of elephants across it to prove its strength. “We loved the symbolism of the Brooklyn Bridge and the migration from Brooklyn to Manhattan,” Stephenson says. “And, you know, we were doing the reverse.”

Stephenson and her team held open auditions to find someone who could embody Ellie's spirit and hype up the crowd from inside the sweltering costume. She calls the person they hired "just phenomenal," but if you want to know who it is, you're out of luck. The dancer is anonymous.

“We just got lucky,” Stephenson says. “The performer is actually from Brooklyn, so a lot of what you see is a combination of them, Criscia, Shenay, and our CEO—this group of brilliant Black women who’ve completely leaned into Ellie and helped shape and elevate the brand.”

Emphasizing just how loved Ellie is, Stephenson tells a story of attending an event with her.

Ellie’s star power is real. “I did a red carpet with Ellie,” Stephenson recalls. “They were like, ‘Okay, thank you, Shana... but Ellie! Ellie!’ They completely shooed me to the side!”

For more from Stephenson—including her career journey and her mission to make Liberty green as iconic as Yankees caps—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

The eight-episode series, adapted from Esi Edugyan’s acclaimed 2018 novel of the same name, concurrently follows Wash’s life as an adult and the start of his journey, when the then-11-year-old (played by Eddie Karanja) was taken under the wing of wealthy abolitionist inventor Christopher “Titch” Wilde (Tom Ellis). If the book-to-screen adaptation followed the same linear timeline as the novel, a majority of Wash’s story would be spent on his relationship with Titch, and the series would primarily be a subversive examination of the "white savior” trope. That would be a fine show, but I would've been left frustrated. Instead, Washington Black makes several elevated changes to establish Wash as the active protagonist of his own story, rather than a man who is reactive to his place in a society built by white men.

Let me be clear: In the Black Twitter debate over depictions of suffering in film, I am not a hardline “no more slave movies” girl. I recognize that, at a time when history is literally being removed from the public record, nuanced movies about the horrors of the past are necessary to connect those horrors with the present and warn against history repeating itself. But unfortunately, shows like Roots and The Underground Railroad are outliers. Most of the period pieces made about Black people are often either traumatizing torture porn, flimsy racial utopias with color-blind casting, or more focused on the white character’s absolution than the Black character’s development. We already have enough shows about the Titchs of the world, and thankfully, the Washington Black miniseries isn’t another one.

Instead, show creator Selwyn Seyfu Hinds gives Wash and the other Black characters more agency and freedom to exist outside of white influence. Wash’s time in Nova Scotia is just one of the book’s four parts, and Wash lives an empty existence until he meets another benefactor in the form of Tanna and her white father (played by Rupert Graves). In the show, however, Wash is passionately swept up in his work before he meets Tanna. He has also found the protector that Titch could never have truly been in Medwin Harris, a minor role from the book that was expanded, with Paradise star Sterling K. Brown pulling double-duty as both actor and executive producer. Later on, Wash’s confrontation with Willard, the slave catcher who has been hunting him for half a decade, is not meant to be the grand finale; it happens in episode 6, with ample time for Wash to move forward without any harbinger of slavery hanging over his head.

The final episode of Washington Black expands the story into a new frontier that I hope to see more of in Hollywood—one where Black period pieces can fully go from harmful to healing. It begins by following the path the book laid; Wash discovers that Titch is still alive and goes to Morocco to confront him, realizing that the white man cannot get past his own childhood trauma. (Hurt people hurt people, antebellum edition.) The book ends ambiguously, only hinting at a future for Wash and Tanna, but the show follows their next adventures. Wash finally builds his flying machine and sails it to his ancestral homeland, Dahomey. There, he’s welcomed by his mother’s former community and learns that before she was enslaved, she was one of the king’s prized female warriors.

Being back home, Wash is also able to reconnect with his mother in a dream. The two communicate, and she explains that she never told him that she was his birth mother because it was better that he didn’t know the truth of his parentage, when they could be ripped apart at any moment. In that moment, Washington Black produced something I’ve never seen before: an exploration of an enslaved woman’s life that not only decentered her captivity but also honored the heartbreaking sacrifice she made rather than lingering on the horrors inflicted upon her.

Washington Black may be a slave story, but it subverts everything about the subgenre. Black characters are given the space to exist outside of pure terror and survival, to find community support, fall in love, and dream of a more equitable world, and the series manages to never falter from wider historical accuracy. The adaptation's take on Wash’s story is the show I need to watch at this moment, to remind me that even in the most authoritarian times, joy and community can be acts of defiance that ensure that we remain free.

In October 2024, Amazon MGM Studios announced that it would adapt the books as a TV series, with Louisa Levy and Gina Fattore serving as co-showrunners. The upcoming show will get the Bridgerton treatment with each season following a new couple from the five-book series as they navigate fake dating, heartbreak, love triangles, and hookups-turned-romances. As Kennedy wrote on Instagram at the time, "The Briar universe is coming to your screens!"

While fans will have a longer wait for other highly-anticipated book-to-series adaptations (ahem, Fourth Wing, ahem), this new series is set to arrive much sooner. Below, we're keeping track of everything we know about the Off Campus TV show.

When will the 'Off Campus' TV series be released?

The Off Campus series has yet to receive an official release date, but the hockey romance is guaranteed to come out sooner rather than later. The October 2024 announcement revealed that Off Campus was given a series order, meaning the show was guaranteed to be made. (When a show's only in development, there's more of a gray area for whether it'll move into production in the future.)

After assembling its cast (more on that below), filming on Off Campus season 1 began in the summer of 2025. In a July 28 interview with Deadline, Prime Video’s Head of TV, Vernon Sanders, gave an exciting update, promising that the show is "definitely going to be launching in 2026."

What is the plot of 'Off Campus?'

The Off Campus book series features five books: The Deal, The Mistake, The Score, The Goal, and The Legacy. Each one (aside from The Legacy) follows the relationship that unfolds between a member of the Briar U hockey team and a female student, among the other trials and tribulations facing co-eds.

While each of the Off Campus books can be read as standalones, when read in order, they introduce the eventual leads of later installments as supporting characters (á la Bridgerton). (For the devout fans, there are even several spinoff novels.)

The TV show is set to follow the same order as the books, so season 1 will follow the events of The Deal. It centers on Hannah Wells, a hockey-hating music major who has a longtime crush on Justin, the singer of a college rock band. So how does the 20-year-old get a boy to fall for her? An intricate jealousy plot, of course! Hannah ends up tutoring Garrett Graham, the playboy star of the hockey team, in exchange for a fake date. But what happens when, after a wild, unexpected night, Garrett realizes he doesn't want his relationship with Hannah to be fake at all?

Who has been cast in the 'Off Campus' TV show?

In May 2025, Deadline revealed that Off Campus has not only found its season 1 leads, but has also cast supporting characters that will get their own starring moments in future seasons.

First up, BAFTA nominee (and young Kate Middleton) Ella Bright will play season 1 lead Hannah Wells, while Until Dawn's Belmont Cameli will star as Garrett. Dune: Prophecy's Josh Heuston will also star as Justin, Hannah's rock-star crush. Other supporting cast announced include Khobe Clarke as Beau Maxwell, the quarterback of Briar's football team, and Steve Howey as Garrett's father, Phil Graham, a retired hockey player.

Joining the series as Garrett's teammates, who will eventually become leading men themselves, include: Antonio Cipriano (Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin) as John Logan, Stephen Kalyn (Motorheads) as Dean Di Laurentis, and Jalen Thomas Brooks (The Pitt) as John Tucker (no relation). Meanwhile, Mika Abdalla (The Pitt) will appear in season 1 as Allie Hayes, the eventual love interest of Dean Di Laurentis.

In the less than three years since the release of Laufey’s debut album, Everything I Know About Love, the 26-year-old has been dubbed a “Gen Z jazz icon” for introducing pop fans to music inspired by old standards.

Her magic touch and fantastical flourishes are all over her forthcoming album, A Matter of Time, due out August 22. In the album’s promotional imagery, the Grammy-winner channels a sorceress casting spells, and the tracks are named after fairy tales and feature stunning orchestrals resonating of early Walt Disney scores. Growing up, Laufey tells Marie Claire via email, she related the most to the bookish Belle from Beauty and the Beast, but she’s far from a damsel in distress in the lyrics on her new release.

Instead, the musician was eager to explore “female rage.” “As I spend more years in my 20s and learn more about love, I’ve experienced so many emotions beyond ‘sad’ or ‘happy,’ and I wanted to write about them.”

She’s also come to embrace how impossible it is to define her, be it her genre-defying artistry or her personality. “I’ve learned that I am a lot more flexible than I thought as a child,” she says. “Growing up, I thought that I would get the most out of life if I put myself in the right boxes and learned the right rules. It wasn’t until I was forced to explore what life looked like outside of my rules and boxes when I found myself as a person and as an artist.”

Here, Laufey shares the classic jazz artists who continue to inspire her, the aughties pop divas she still listens to, and the Mitski song she wishes she wrote.

I was obsessed with Golden Age movie musicals growing up, so I’d have to say [the soundtracks to] The Sound of Music or An American in Paris. I just love the sweeping orchestral music and waltzy dancing.

The first album I bought with my own money was a Miley Cyrus CD.

Chet Baker Sings. I remember listening to it at home; my dad had it on CD.

An evening in a Shanghai jazz club in the ‘30s!

The ending of La La Land always gets me.

I discover a lot through what my fans are listening to, honestly. Other than that, I get most of my music recommendations from my twin sister. I don’t make playlists; I just save hers!

Cowboy Carter. It was the most magical show from start to finish. The way it blended Beyoncé’s eras and included different sounds from different areas of music felt like a deep dive through the history of American music and dance.

I have a Bill Evans cap that I’m obsessed with.

“My Love Mine All Mine” [by Mitski].

Lana Del Rey.

I’m going to have to go with some old masters. I think an all-female lineup would be so cool, so Astrud Gilberto, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Julie London.

Recently, I’ve been listening to Tom Odell.

I have two modes: Either I’m listening to pop hits—currently on a K-pop kick—or classical music, no in-between.

I love listening to Adrienne Lenker or Nat King Cole.

“Angeleyes” by ABBA.

2000s pop bangers! Destiny’s Child, Rihanna, Fergie, Lady Gaga.

Probably the entirety of [the A Matter of Time track] “Snow White,” especially the lyrics, “Mirrors tell lies to me / My mind just plays along.” It’s my favorite because, though the lyrics are a bit brutal, it strangely helped me with my insecurities.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The brainchild of beloved author Taylor Jenkins Reid, an on-screen adaptation of the New York Times best seller has been in the works for a while....a long while. Originally published in 2017 and made popular by #Booktok in 2021, the novel, which draws inspiration from the salacious love life of Hollywood bombshell Elizabeth Taylor and was inspired by the real-life memoir of Ava Gardner, was originally rumored to become a Freeform series. The project fell through, however, and by March 2022, streaming giant Netflix announced that it had picked the book up for a film adaptation.

Reid told Associated Press in 2025 that she and the rest of the team have been hard at work bringing Evelyn, her seven husbands, and her one true love, Celia St. James, to life. “We’re taking it very seriously and I give Netflix so much credit because they have such an immense respect for the readership of that book,” she said. “They want to make them happy.”

It seems the team behind the film also wants to get the casting just right. After all, as Reid has pointed out, Riley Keogh couldn’t have been more perfectly cast as the titular character in her last book adaptation, Prime Video's Daisy Jones & the Six. “It sets a really high bar. [We’ve] got to get Evelyn Hugo exactly right,” she said.

As we patiently wait for the film to stream, below, we're keeping track of everything there is to know about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Netflix movie, from the release date and casting news to the plot.

What is 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' about?

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is about a reclusive Golden Age-era movie star who decides to release a tell-all memoir upon her death that will reveal her lifetime of juicy secrets—including those involving her much-talked about love life.

Married seven times over (eat your heart out, Liz Taylor!), she’s experienced just about every kind of relationship there is. However, the love of her life has always remained a mystery to the public. Now, she’s chosen a no-name journalist to reveal her one true soulmate: Celia, a lover that none of Evelyn’s seven husbands could ever hold a candle to.

The film should follow the plot—but not entirely to a T. Reid told TIME in 2025 that the movie will likely take some liberties with the script in order to address the #MeToo movement that occurred shortly after the novel was released. “There was no Harvey Weinstein conversation when I finished that book,” she said. “We have a real opportunity here to further that conversation, and to make the movie better than the book.”

Who is involved in 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' film adaptation?

Fans of Reid’s work will be happy to know that Reid herself will have a major hand in the Netflix adaptation of her book. She’s signed on to be the film’s executive producer.

The novelist also has a powerhouse team behind her. Liz Tigelaar—whose work you might recognize from hit 2000s series like Revenge and Nashville, and, more recently, Hulu's Little Fires Everywhere—signed on to write the film’s script early on.

According to Reid, Tigelaar nailed it. “[Liz]…is a phenomenal talent,” the writer gushed in a 2023 AP interview. “I said, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to do this, I think you need to condense this story, and she said, ‘No I don’t,” and I go, ‘Okay,’ and then she turns in the script and I was like, ‘I was wrong, you were right.’ You got it!”

Though Leslye Headland (The Acolyte, Russian Doll) was originally tapped to direct, she was no longer involved with the project by January 2025, per Variety. Headland told the publication, “It’s one of those things where you know it’s going to be a huge success. I thought, ‘Damn it. It’s not going to work out with me involved in it, but it is going to be wildly successful.’”

In February 2025, she was replaced by Maggie Betts (The Burial, Novitiate). According to Variety, Betts is also working on the script with Tigelaar.

Brad Mendelsohn, who worked with Reid on Daisy Jones & the Six, is also on board as a producer.

“I feel quite confident that every single person that I've chosen to oversee these adaptations is taking them so seriously [and] has such a sincerity,” Reid told PEOPLE in May 2025. “They’re all doing a very good job.”

What has Taylor Jenkins Reid said about 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' adaptation?

Reid has been relatively quiet about the film’s adaptation in recent years, but for good reason. “I think people mistake me not saying anything as a lack of interest or focus and that’s not the case,” she told AP in May 2025.

The author added, “Everyone is working incredibly hard to get this movie made and everyone knows that there is a lot of pressure to get it exactly right.”

When will Netflix’s version of 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' be released?

There is no release date announced for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo on Netflix. With the film still in early days of development, it is difficult to predict when it might premiere. We'd suggest you don't hold your breath: It may not be until at least late 2027 that the film comes out, and that's should pre-production, casting, filming, and post-production move along swimmingly.

Who has been cast in 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' film adaptation?

No official casting decisions had been made for the Netflix film. While fans have been clamoring for who might play the glamorous characters on the page, the crew behind the production has explained the lack of actors attached is due to their process.

“We’re not casting until we have a script that’s ready,” Mendelsohn told TIME. “There’s so much attention on it because of the fan base that there is a pressure to get it right.”

Reid, who worked as a casting assistant early on in her career, has remained largely tight-lipped about her “strong opinions” when it comes to names for both Evelyn Hugo and Celia St. James—but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been thinking about it. “[We’ve] got to get Evelyn Hugo exactly right,” she told PEOPLE.

The writer is particularly invested in the leading roles. “There’s just a short list of women that I am incredibly, incredibly excited about,” she said to AP in 2023.

Several actresses have since thrown their hats in the ring for the film. For starters? Camila Morrone, who played Camila in Daisy Jones & the Six. “I’m trying to play that part,” she said of Evelyn Hugo in an interview with The Skimm.

Ana de Armas (Ballerina) and Eiza González have also expressed interest in the role.

One actress who won't be involved? Jessica Chastain, who fans have frequently named as their top choice to play Celia. After being asked to sign copies of the book upon numerous occasions, she took to X (formerly Twitter) to ask fans to stop the requests.

The Oscar-winner wrote, "I’ve been asked multiple times by fans, to sign books that I’m not attached to contractually. Because it feels wrong, and like Im taking credit for someone else’s work, I’ll say I cant sign because I’m not doing it. That doesn’t mean I’ve read a bad script."

She later put any lingering rumors to rest by telling E! News that there was “zero possibility” she’d be taking on the role.

While Chastain may be out, you can start putting together your other dream castings now, as we wait for more news regarding The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo to be announced.

Since the eight-episode murder-mystery series dropped on July 21, 2025, The Hunting Wives has become a word-of-mouth hit, with fans demanding more episodes after a wild ending cliffhanger. Below, read on for everything you need to know about a possible The Hunting Wives season 2 so far.

Has 'The Hunting Wives' been renewed for season 2?

As of August 7, Netflix has not announced whether The Hunting Wives will return for season 2. The streaming giant typically waits to see several weeks of streaming numbers before announcing a show's fate, though series with particularly impressive ratings have been renewed earlier.

However, the decision to renew The Hunting Wives is a bit more complicated than a typical Netflix original. The soapy drama is produced by Lionsgate TV and was set to stream on Starz until Netflix picked it up in June. Since The Hunting Wives had such a unique journey to Netflix's Top 10, we'll have to wait and see what might be in store.

When would 'The Hunting Wives' season 2 come out?

It's difficult to predict a release window without an official renewal, but odds are a straightforward drama like The Hunting Wives would have a short hiatus. Filming for season 1 began in spring 2024 in North Carolina, before Netflix took the show's distribution from Starz in June 2025. If work begins on new episodes soon, season 2 could arrive by the end of 2026 or early 2027.

Who would be in the cast of 'The Hunting Wives' season 2?

With the shockingly high body count at the end of season 1 (though maybe not that surprising considering all the guns), several of the supporting cast of The Hunting Wives probably won't be back for season 2. So far, the cast most likely to return includes Brittany Snow (Sophie O'Neil), Malin Akerman (Margo Banks), Dermot Mulroney (Jed Banks), Evan Jonigkeit (Graham O'Neil), Jaime Ray Newman (Callie), George Ferrier (Brad), Chosen Jacobs (Jamie), and Karen Rodriguez (Detective Salazar).

What would 'The Hunting Wives' season 2 be about?

Spoilers for The Hunting Wives season 1 finale ahead. A quick recap of where things stand by the end of The Hunting Wives: It turns out that Abby, the teen whose murder is season 1's central mystery, was killed by Margo, who'd been having an affair with Abby's boyfriend Brad and got an abortion. When Sophie figures this out, Margo's troubled brother Kyle comes after her to protect his sister. Sophie runs Kyle over with her car (arguably self-defense) and then dumps his body off a cliff. She also answers a call from Margo on Kyle's phone, so Margo will soon figure out that someone killed her brother. (Also, Netflix has confirmed that Pastor Pete (Paul Teal), Abby's mother Starr (Chrissy Metz), and Brad's mother Jill (Katie Lowes) are all dead as well, and Jill takes the blame for both Abby and Starr's murders.)

Speaking to Variety, show creator Rebecca Cutter teased that it would be "smart" for season 2 to cover a new murder-mystery, before adding, "I don’t know whodunit yet or who got done!" She also said that the episodes could pick up a little after the deadly encounter between Sophie and Kyle.

“I think we’d do a little bit of a time jump—not a year, but a time," she told the outlet. "By the end of shooting, I realized that the two engines of the show are the whodunit and the Margo/Sophie relationship, and tracking how those spines intersect with each other. The first thing I’m thinking about is, where are these two women at the start? Where are they at the end? What are the peaks and valleys of their individual power, of their relationship? So it’s tracking a course for that, and then figuring out what the crime engine is."

What have the cast and crew said about 'The Hunting Wives' season 2?

In an interview with Vulture, Malin Akerman shared her thoughts on Margo's journey in season 2 and suggested that her character will be on the warpath after Kyle's death. "Margo is at the point of fear her wrath—because this is not going to be good when what happened to Kyle comes out."

She also said that, though getting back with Jed would make the most sense, "that’s such a straight-edge kind of answer because it’ll never be that easy...I would like to see Margo come into her power and take over the fucking world, truly, but she’s a murderer, so I don’t know how that’s gonna work out for her. I think she’ll have to reconcile with Jed. I don’t know how she moves forward without doing that. I can’t imagine the relationship will be easier or be the way she wants it. But you can’t put Margo in a cage."

She added, "I don’t want her to go to jail. I want to keep going. Let’s get a few seasons out of it. Everyone thinks Jill killed Abby, so let’s see how long she can keep Sophie at bay. And now she’s got a terrible ace card with her brother being dead."

"[It's about] a little Black boy who refused to have his circumstances dictate his possibility and all of the people who recognize that to have a dreamer in their presence is a rare and beautiful thing, and needs to be protected at all cost," star and executive producer Brown told Marie Claire at a London junket and activation. "It doesn't matter that he's inured in the circumstances of slavery. He is going to dream what he's going to dream, until it becomes his truth."

To bring the historical fiction novel to life, creator Selwyn Seyfu Hinds and Brown recruited a cast of talented up-and-coming stars and fan-favorite television veterans from shows like Lucifer and Game of Thrones. Below, read on to learn more about the all-star cast of Washington Black.

Eddie Karanja as Young Washington Black

George Washington Black, a.k.a. Wash, was born on a Barbados sugar plantation and raised by an enslaved woman named Big Kit. His life changes forever at age 11, when a member of the plantation-owning family recognizes his natural intellect.

Eddie Karanja is a young British actor who began with stage roles and made his onscreen debut in the 2020 Christmas movie Jack And The Beanstalk: After Ever After. Before Washington Black, he was best known for playing Jed Walker in the first season of Netflix's The Sandman.

Ernest Kingsley Jr. as Washington Black

As an adult, Wash (now going by the name Jack Crawford) lives as a free man and budding scientist in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he's part of a community that spans the African and Caribbean diaspora. However, his traumatic past still follows him.

Ernest Kingsley Jr. grew up in England and made his acting debut in 2015, on the sci-fi series The Sparticle Mystery. His other credits include the 2022 shows War of the Worlds and Grace, as well as an episode of The Sandman. He also wrote the upcoming short film A Love Story.

Tom Ellis as Titch Wilde

Christopher “Titch” Wilde is the younger brother of Wash's plantation owner, Erasmus Wilde (Julian Rhind-Tutt). In addition to being less cruel than his brother, Titch is an abolitionist and inventor who takes Wash under his wing to be an assistant and help build a flying machine.

Tom Ellis, 46, is a Welsh actor who's best known stateside for playing the titular character in the cult-favorite series Lucifer. His other credits include EastEnders, The Catherine Tate Show, Miranda, Merlin, and season 2 of Tell Me Lies. Next up, he's set to appear in the Netflix movie adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club.

Sterling K. Brown as Medwin Harris

Medwin Harris is a boarding-house owner and de facto leader of the Black community in Nova Scotia, who serves as Wash's mentor and father figure.

Sterling K. Brown, 49, is an Emmy-winning actor best known for starring in shows like American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, This Is Us, and Paradise, as well as the films Black Panther, Waves, and Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. In 2024, he received an Oscar nomination for his role in the satirical comedy American Fiction. He also hosts the podcast "We Don't Always Agree" with his wife, Ryan Michelle Bathe.

Iola Evans as Tanna Goff

Tanna Goff is the British daughter of a scientist who helps him with his experiments. Her mother was a Black woman from the Solomon Islands, who died when Tanna was young. Though Tanna does not want to hide her racial heritage, her father encourages her to pass for white and marry a wealthy man.

Iola Evans grew up in Reading, England, and graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She made her acting debut in a 2018 production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's play An Octoroon, and went on to appear in small roles on Carnival Row and The 100. She also starred in the horror movies Out of Darkness and Netflix's Choose or Die.

Edward Bluemel as Billy McGee

William "Billy" McGee is a handsome young aristocrat who is hosting the Goffs in Halifax under the arrangement that he will marry Tanna, which Tanna discovers once they arrive. Like several people in this show, he's hiding a major secret.

Edward Bluemel, 32, is an English actor who made his West End debut in 2017 and appeared in shows and films including A Discovery of Witches, Sex Education, Killing Eve, and Netflix's Persuasion. He's best known for playing Lord Guildford Dudley in Prime Video's short-lived romantasy series My Lady Jane.

Rupert Graves as Mr. Goff

Tanna's father Mr. Goff is a member of the same royal scientific society that both Wash and Titch have always wanted to join. Goff is played by Rupert Graves, 62, a long-time actor who has appeared in dozens of shows and films, including A Room With a View, Maurice, V for Vendetta, Death at a Funeral (2007), Emma., and Surface. He's best known for playing D.I. Lestrade in the BBC's Sherlock.

Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Miss Angie

Miss Angie, another member of the Halifax community who has a will-they-won't-they flirtation with Medwin, is played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster, 49. The British actress is best known for starring in action blockbusters, including Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Dune, and Ballerina. She has also appeared in dozens of British shows, including Bad Girls, EastEnders, Top Boy, and Sex Education, as well as in the 2023 indie film Earth Mama. Next up, she's set to reprise her role as Mira Troy (a.k.a. Moriarty) in the Netflix movie Enola Holmes 3.

Shaunette Renée Wilson as Big Kit

Big Kit, who raised Wash as a young boy, is played by Shaunette Renée Wilson, 35. Wilson was born in Guyana and grew up in N.Y.C. before graduating from the Yale School of Drama. She made her onscreen debut with a role in the Showtime series Billions, followed by roles in Black Panther (as a member of the Dora Milaje), Into the Dark, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Karate Kids: Legends. She's also known for playing Dr. Mina Okafor in the medical drama The Resident.

Billy Boyd as Willard

Willard, a bounty hunter who's set on capturing Wash, is played by Billy Boyd, 56. The Scottish actor and musician is best known for playing Peregrin "Pippin" Took and appearing on the soundtrack for the original Lord of the Rings trilogy. He also voiced Chucky's child, Glen/Glenda, in the 2004 film Seed of Chucky, and he has appeared in the shows Moby Dick, Snowfall, Outlander, and The Legend of Vox Machina.

Sundra Oakley as Theodora

Theodora, a badass pirate who young Wash meets along his journey, is played by Sundra Oakley, 50. The Jamaican-American actress has appeared in shows and films including Sex and the City, Days of Our Lives, Big Hero 6, Legends, The Resident, and Bob Marley: One Love. She also competed on Survivor: Cook Islands in 2006, where she placed fourth.

Charles Dance as James Wilde

Charles Dance, a.k.a. Tywin Lannister himself, makes a special appearance as Titch's father. As a 19th-century nepo baby, Titch struggles to live up to his father's standards and reputation.

Dance, 78, is a renowned English actor who started his career as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company before transitioning to screen roles. In addition to Game of Thrones, he's best known for playing Lord Louis Mountbatten in The Crown seasons 3 and 4. He has also starred in countless films, including Alien 3, Godsford Park, The Imitation Game, Me Before You, and Mank.

At 58-ish years old, despite having all the material trappings of the first type and (almost) none of the bad luck of the second, Carrie fits the definition of alien exactly. (That run-walk always felt off...) She is in a long-distance situationship with the most annoying man this side of Appalachia, is writing historical romance fiction inspired by the rats in her backyard, and still hasn’t bought furniture for her Gramercy Park home that features a grumpy-hot British tenant she won’t admit she’s attracted to. She got the job, the boyfriend, and the apartment in the city where she argues you’re always looking for one of the three (see: episode 5, season 5 of Sex and the City), yet she’s having bad phone sex and wearing hats that give her the appearance of a cottagecore Speedy Gonzales.

Amid this sorry state of affairs, we have one last bastion of relatability—a potential window into the psyche of the third type of person: the books she reads. The hardbacks Carrie carts around in lieu of a Gucci top-handle or Fendi baguette might just reveal the emotions she obfuscates with quippy one-liners.

While Carrie has always been a reader, trophies of literary fiction appear in AJLT as more welcome product placement than Carrie’s egregious ingestion of TUMS. The books are, in part, star and executive producer Sarah Jessica Parker’s influence, as she provided the props team with literary suggestions for different characters. The actress has said to plow through two volumes a day in the run-up to her duties as a Booker Prize judge, a great excuse for why she doesn’t watch her own show. (SJP also has an imprint with independent press Zando, publishing work by contemporary women novelists, including Lucy Caldwell’s prizewinning These Days.)

I found myself pausing the show whenever a book appeared, hoping for a crumb of intertextual honesty. While we could interpret the vintage reissue of Helen Garner’s This House of Grief as a mere styling complement to a purple satin tunic, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was reading a book about, say, a father’s trial for the murder of his children a sign of plot points to come? A diegetic cry for help? Below are my findings (though I’m bereft to report I’m no closer to locating where in the world Che Diaz is).

'This House of Grief' by Helen Garner

Beloved Australian writer Helen Garner has only recently caught on in the U.S.; Carrie must have read the New Yorker profile that described Garner as “candid about her emotions, analyzing them with a degree of remove which allows her to illustrate, with an unsparing empathy, how irrational we all can be, and how little we understand of our own behavior, let alone that of those around us.” This House of Grief is an interesting choice. The nonfiction book recounts the 2005 trial of Robert Farquharson, a man charged with drowning his three sons, ages 10, 7, and 2, by driving his car into a dam.

Blame it on being a boy dad, but the transcripts of Farquharson on the witness stand reminded me of Aidan (John Corbett) at his whiniest: “I should have been there, Carrie…I should have been there.” Carrie has remained democratic about the situation regarding Aidan’s problem child, Wyatt. But after he “accidentally” bashed her in the head during laser tag, I wouldn’t blame her for indulging in the fantasy of a little roadside accident portrayed as a crime of passion.

'Evenings and Weekends' by Oisín McKenna

Spied between the bulges at Anthony’s (Mario Cantone) newly opened Hot Fellas bakery is Carrie’s U.K. edition of Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna, a novel about gay 20-somethings sucking and fucking their way through a hot summer in London. Carrie has always been alarmingly prudish and out of touch for a sex columnist. She couldn’t stomach dating a bisexual man in the ‘90s and refused to say “vagina” in an ad on her podcast, resulting in its entire collapse, putting her comedian co-hosts Che Diaz (Sara Ramírez) on the street and Jackie Nee (Bobby Lee) off the wagon. So this fever dream of a book about love and lust is also research. What is it like to see a naked body that isn’t Aidan’s or Big’s? Would she ever again feel the sense that she was “alone in an enormous city, and there were dozens of shapes her life might take”?

Carrie is probably also using McKenna’s prose to better picture Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) in London, where “fashion queers strut past the station dressed like early 2000s pop stars and characters from The Matrix.” The PR maven doesn’t deign to give Carrie a scene report herself—she appears only as an iMessage bubble about once a season, having adopted the mantra of Cattrall: “I don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself.”

'The Life of the Mind' by Christine Smallwood

Christine Smallwood is the high priestess of writing about the phones. Her characters text, scroll, and photograph; the drama erupts from the screen. AJLT similarly spins around the axis of technology. Multi-episode plotlines are dedicated to boomer-style mishaps like Aidan’s thumbs-up reaction to a message or ill-timed phone sex. Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker) had her phone on silent mode while she was in the editing bay with her work crush, meaning she didn’t get the call that her father had a stroke, meaning she missed saying goodbye to him when he died for the second time. Carrie once professed, “After all, computers crash, people die, relationships fall apart. The best we can do is breathe and reboot.” She’s never giving up that MacBook, so she might as well lean in.

'We Burn Daylight' by Bret Anthony Johnston

Bret Anthony Johnston’s Shakespearian novel about star-crossed lovers in a doomsday Christian cult, based on the real Waco, Texas siege, is a warning against isolation. Carrie learned too much about the Shaw family when she visited Virginia; she felt on the outside of their bond, and she seems to have accepted it. The strangest part of Aidan admitting that he slept with his ex-wife (because they were so distraught about their youngest son’s behavioral issues…?) was Carrie’s lack of a reaction. She did not expect total fidelity because they’d never defined their LDR, she explains—although this does not mean she wants to be with anyone else. Johnston is not out to shame his religious zealot characters, cut-and-dry, and instead asks the universally applicable question, “What would you sacrifice for the one you love?” Spoiler: It’s a bloody, brutal end, but the teenage lovers both survive. There might be mess. Carrie might be flirting with downstairs tenant Duncan Reeves (Jonathan Cake) too close to the sun. Still, she has so far been adamant that she has a boyfriend, Miranda. She hopes she’s the Juliet who lives.

'The Berry Pickers' by Amanda Peters

Yet another tragic splintering of a family in a rural setting? Carrie is simply obsessed with reading about dead or missing children this season. In the second Sex and the City movie, which I’m loath to remind anyone of, Carrie declared that having kids is “just not for us…It’s just not who we are,” meaning her and Big. (Carrie’s childlessness could have been built out as an intriguing plot point in AJLT, but that would require the writers to learn subtlety and sensitivity.) Amanda Peters’s mystery revolving around a 4-year-old Mi'kmaq girl kidnapped from a blueberry field in Maine is rich with strange coincidences—and the same can be said for Carrie’s life. She’s perpetually waiting for a sign that the man is right, that the shoe fits. If The Berry Pickers can offer any insights, it’s that the world never makes logical sense.

'Catch the Rabbit' by Lana Bastašić

A female friendship novel that doubles as a Bosnian road trip adventure, Lana Bastašić captures the tension inherent in a relationship between two women who use one another as a mirror. “I can’t recall half my childhood, yet I remember the details of her with irritating clarity,” Bastašić writes. “Blue bubble gum, watermelon flavor. A scratch on her left knee. Cracks in the red lips. One time she had told me that writers write because they don’t have memories of their own, so they make some up.” Carrie has had tiffs, rifts, and all-out rows with every one of her friends, though she is most comfortable being a bitch to Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). God forbid a houseguest help herself to a yogurt. (Though tiptoeing to the bathroom fully nude in someone else’s home is bizarre, I’ll admit.) Bastašić shows how important history is to a friendship, but if Miranda makes one more wrong move, she risks Carrie’s new pal Seema (Sarita Choudhury) replacing her entirely.

The race may be short, but Fraser-Pryce makes a lasting impact. There’s her speed, of course—but also her style. In those ten seconds, she’s a flash of green, purple, or pink hair.

In the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk", Fraser-Pryce tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike what her hairstyles mean to her—and how they actually help her win.

The Jamaican sprinter starts planning her look well in advance of competitions. “I’m knowing where I’m going. I’m knowing the color of the flags. I know what color I did the year before and that I don’t want to do anymore,” she says. “It gives you this excitement.”

But it’s not just about debuting a new look. “It forces you to kind of take your mind off the competition,” the 38-year-old explains. “Because it can help you to really just settle the nerves and not make the competition the sole focus.”

Fraser-Pryce says some runners prefer to be completely locked in—and that’s fine. But for her, “then everything becomes the competition. And then you find that if you constantly do that, then it makes the moment too big—that you feel like you can’t fit in the moment.”

“I want to make sure that I’m enjoying the moment,” she adds. “So for me, I plan my hair. I ship my hair, if I have to. I buy the color. Sometimes I do it myself.”

There’s another layer to her hair choices: representing where she’s from. “I’m from an inner city, right? So they’re known for styles—like big earrings, gold teeth, different wigs and colors. That’s how they represent,” says Fraser-Pryce, who grew up in the Waterhouse area of Kingston.

Early in her career, she worried about “representing that way,” because people assumed that if “you had a gold filling on your tooth, or you had colored hair, or those big hoop earrings with your name in them, they kind of think you’re ghetto.”

“But for a lot of persons in my inner city or from Waterhouse, it’s making a statement. It’s like, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ You know, showing up. It’s representing that boldness and just standing out... Being able to honor that heritage in our culture is truly wonderful.”

It makes sense, then, that her haircare line, AFIMI, means “it’s mine” in Jamaican patois. “It’s really making sure that you take ownership of just who you are and how you want to show up—and how that helps you to be you and to be your best.”

For more from Fraser-Pryce—including her early life in Kingston, the upcoming World Championships in Tokyo, and why she chooses harmony over balance when it comes to motherhood and career—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Logan Lerman is pulling his phone out of his pocket, preparing to dial his fiancée to ask if he’s a “soft boy.” (Read: a man with a sensitive exterior that may or may not be used to manipulate others.) Running on only a few hours of sleep (he’s doing the rounds during the Tribeca Film Festival) and a freshly downed espresso, the actor is more insistent that he has several glaring asshole qualities that disqualify him from soft boy status.

He’s aware, of course, that his appearance this hot June afternoon at a downtown hotel café—casual gray T-shirt, tousled brown hair, sheepish grin—betrays his argument. After all, he’s built an impressive fan base and resumé off being the quintessential nice guy.

Still, Lerman maintains (somewhat unconvincingly), “There’s a major jerk in me at times." He continues, "We all have that, and it’s either that we recognize it or we don’t.”

Perhaps the 33-year-old is quick to highlight his unpleasant traits because he's spent the past few days promoting Oh, Hi!, in which he plays a character incapable of clocking his shitty behavior—at least until it's too late. In the new comedy, written and directed by Sophie Brooks, Lerman’s Isaac is a classic bad communicator, leading to an uncomfortable confrontation with Molly Gordon’s Iris when he admits, on a romantic weekend away, that he didn’t realize they were in a relationship. Iris finds herself in a “situationship” horror story while Isaac winds up in something of a modern-day Misery.

The anti-rom-com (out July 25) is a different kind of project for the typically dramatic actor, who spent the past few years leading “heavy” shows about familial trauma like Hunters and We Were the Lucky Ones. He’s still best recognized as Charlie from the 2012 adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which, in addition to putting him on the map as an actor-to-watch (garnering a Best Young Actor nod at the 2013 Critics' Choice Awards), earned him the banner of “White Boy of the Century” by a certain subset of very online Millennial/Gen Z cusps.

But long before GIFs of his performance in Perks were reblogged across Tumblr, Lerman had his sights set on Hollywood. Born and raised in Beverly Hills (he's not a nepo baby: his father works in medicine and his mother became his manager), he began appearing in commercials at the age of four and went on to land supporting roles in dramas like The Butterfly Effect and 3:10 to Yuma.

Movies were a large part of his childhood even outside of his career. He recalls paging through the local newspaper for the showtimes of major releases—or what he calls “special movies,” ones that feel original and get audiences into theater seats. “I have a bit of an issue where I really romanticized what movies were and long for that feeling and that approach to come back.” He and his best friend were also early adopters of YouTube, creating comedy videos and uploading their shorts to a channel called @monkeynuts1069—he’s quick to clarify that the name was the sole genius of his friend. (“I would love to have that name,” Lerman jokes. “My email [addresses] were so bad. My dad made my emails for me because I didn't even know how to do that.”)

Eventually, he nabbed the titular role in the Percy Jackson franchise, becoming something of an endearing teen heartthrob—only amplified when he played opposite Emma Watson in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which remains the gold standard of a coming-of-age film a decade later.

Oh, Hi! marks Lerman’s first leading film role in five years in what feels like a calculated move that perfectly plays into and against his off-screen heartthrob persona. But he’s genuinely surprised when I ask if that was intentional; if he saw the movie as a way to wink at the many horny fan cams and fawning tweets about him. (If his fiancée, artist Analuisa Corrigan, posts something of him, Stan Twitter will find it.)

“Every actor is trying to break out of whatever box they're in,” he says, explaining that his plan to star in Oh, Hi! was “so not thought out” but rather that he wanted to try something new. “That's always the hardest thing: The industry and the audience see you as one thing. And then they want to keep seeing you as that in a way.”

Still, he adds with a smile, “If it means that we get to make more movies, I’ll take the [White Boy of the Century] title.”

Though Brooks and Gordon began writing Oh, Hi! in 2020, it wasn’t until Lerman came on board in early 2024 that the film was able to gain enough funding to move into production.

He explains that, much to his confusion, several actors had passed on the role of Isaac before he was offered the part. When he got to read the script, he was “immediately excited by the opportunity,” accepting and shooting just six months later.

“It didn't really resonate with me as being something to be fearful of,” Lerman says. “Maybe [the reason others passed] was that the character’s a dick or something. I like that about him. I like the conflict.”

“I’m guided by what I want to see,” he continues. “That was the main factor in why I ended up doing Oh, Hi!. It was like, This is a movie I want to see in theaters. That's the bar.”

The only thing that did intimidate Lerman about Oh, Hi! was that he would be tied to a bed for what ended up being “easily 100 hours.” Not because of how exposed it would leave him (he is shirtless nearly the entire runtime), but because it would confine the “movement” of his performance. He was concerned how the cinematography would stay interesting in such a small space.

There was no doubt in filmmaker Brooks’s mind that Lerman could manage. “I’d seen Logan in many of his roles and had always been impressed by how natural and effortless his performances feel—never a moment of dishonesty or strain,” she tells Marie Claire via email. “He is also, in the truest sense of the word, a gentleman. I wanted Isaac to have that quality.”

The star enjoyed the challenge of playing into Isaac’s moral ambiguity, while also finding sympathy for him. A lesser script and performance could have made him a one-dimensional trope, but Lerman firmly establishes him as complicated, caught in the throes of dating just as much as Iris.

“Logan found the humanity and complexity in a man wanting something and being scared to have it,” Brooks adds. “That understanding bleeds through in every scene. In moments of absurdity, he brought a realism to Isaac’s circumstance that grounded the comedy in a way that feels essential for the stakes of the film.”

To Lerman’s surprise, playing the part was also healing on a personal level. “I'm much more of an Iris than I am an Isaac, as a person and in my dating experiences. [It was] a really cathartic experience for me to get into the mind of Isaac, who is much more like some people I've dated in the past.”

The Oh, Hi! actor is now happily engaged to Corrigan, with whom he’s been publicly linked to since January 2020, but he was no stranger to the taxing New York dating scene before they met. “Dating in your 20s is fucking horrible,” he says. “No one's ready. Everyone's working through shit. A lot of the experiences I've blamed on things not working out probably have to do with age and maturity, and understanding oneself.”

Though he agrees Iris makes “a really bad choice” in Oh, Hi!, he sympathizes with how it’s ultimately in the pursuit of love. Lerman declines to share what the craziest thing he has done for love but admits to being a “romantic,” flying across the globe spontaneously just to see someone.

“Life can be summed up as a series of embarrassments in those moments that impact you so much when you felt so deeply, and you shot your shot and you missed. I look back at those things very fondly and laugh at the intensity of it all—when you're smitten with somebody and you do something bold and it goes wrong. It was sweet.”

One shot he certainly didn’t miss was when he proposed to Corrigan (in a Central Park rowboat, no less) last year. Her being a December-Capricorn and he being a January-Capricorn, the star explains she’s a bit more extroverted than he is. Two years ago, she threw him a big birthday and surprised him with a cake—plastered with, yes, images of himself, crowning him the White Boy of the Century. (Inevitably, images from the party also went viral.) He was “humiliated” by being presented with the cake in front of a large group of his friends. “I pushed that away into some closet in my mind.”

His modesty is perhaps why he has become so synonymous with his outcast character, Charlie, in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It’s not been lost on him that the film has contributed to his reputation, that fans still bring it up. He’s also always searching for projects that resonate with him as much as the film did: “It was one of those special experiences where I read the script and I was like, I have to do this. I love this. I read so many scripts, and I'm like, That's what I'm chasing.”

Looking ahead, Lerman hopes to continue exploring comedy—which he will do as a guest star in the forthcoming season 5 of Only Murders in the Building. He remains tight-lipped about any plot or character details, but he does know who the season’s culprit is.

In the long term, Lerman also aims to produce more (and potentially direct) after previously receiving production credits on the 2022 sci-fi film Press Play and the acclaimed 2024 thriller Skincare. He wants to do so now more than ever, particularly after something he worked on for nearly four years fell through, due to a “bad partner.” (He declined to say what it was, but confirms he didn’t write it.)

He’s aware that much of his career thus far has been defined by the work he did as a teenager and in his early 20s, and has just one criterion for how he hopes to see his next one. “The pursuit is just to continue making movies. Hopefully, the movie can be special, but I want them to be released in a special way.” He means completely independent productions that find distribution, are properly promoted, and make their way into theaters for enough time for fans to see them—“movies that connect with that feeling I had as a kid…That’s the goal.”

He could easily keep yapping about his earnest love for cinema and where he likes to see movies on the big screen in his hometown of L.A. He goes on at length about the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’s programming; what a great job Quentin Tarantino has done reopening New Beverly Cinema and The Vista; his love for The Arrow, The Egyptian, and even AMCs (though he’ll go 30 minutes late to skip the ads). He could go on and on about the beauty of seeing something with a collective audience.

We must wrap up, though, so he has time for a photo shoot. “That’s the worst part. I hate modeling and shit!” But he’s okay hamming it up for the camera, playing up the projected image of his internet boyfriend status if it’s for the good of the film’s lifeblood.

“I try to grapple with, 'What do I do now?' versus 'What should I be doing now?' versus what I normally would do for my career and for myself, selfishly, but also, more importantly, for the projects I want to work on. I want to be a tool to get them made, as well as seen and distributed properly.”

Photographer: Ruben Chamorro | Grooming: Eddie Cook | Location: Fouquet's New York

The coming-of-age period drama is a tale of self-discovery and defiant joy for many of its characters, including Tanna and the titular character, a genius inventor who escaped slavery (played as an adult by Ernest Kingsley Jr.). It was the same for Evans, who has previously held roles that reflect her biracial identity, including her 2018 stage debut in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play An Octoroon. "It was nice to play a character who just wants to be her whole full self, which is like, Why can I not be that?” Evans tells Marie Claire at a London junket and activation.

She adds, "I was doing a bit of processing in real time."

Filming the Hulu series was an emotional experience for the Reading, England-born actress and the rest of the cast, who spent several months traveling between Nova Scotia, Mexico, and Iceland. But still, her co-star and series executive producer Sterling K. Brown describes her as being “wickedly fierce” throughout the entire shoot. “I feel like that fierceness comes across in Tanna in the most incredible ways,” he says. “[Tanna] was not a damsel-in-distress by any stretch of the imagination, nor is Iola. She’s the perfect person to bring this character to life.”

Below, Evans chats with Marie Claire about depicting an 1800s love triangle, channeling mythology for Tanna’s backstory, and the legacy she wants to leave beyond Hollywood.

MC: When you first heard about Washington Black and the role of Tanna, what made you excited about the project?

IE: I was excited to do something which was being made by the creator Selwyn [Hinds] because I [previously] went up for another project that he did. I think he's so gracious and kind. We had a general meeting, and we had this amazing chat about what it means to be an artist. It was all sorts of things, which I hadn't really thought about before, and it came up at this special time. So when [Washington Black] came up, I was excited to be seen for it. Then I read the book and fell in love with Esi's original story and the original Tanna, and I was excited to see where it went from there.

MC: Tanna’s first scene introduces her as someone who demands to be more than what society had for her. What about her story did you relate to?

IE: Part of what Tanna's challenge is is taking responsibility for her own identity, because I think other people are quite quick to assign it to her. There are a lot of quite constrictive social things going on that she is obligated to behave a certain way to pass as white. Her own father is encouraging her to pass too. But I really think our lives are so precious, so you have to—as best as you can with what you've got—try and be on this quest for a fully realized, authentic existence. And to be around people who bring that out in you, and this is what Tanna and Wash do for each other.

MC: How much does Tanna’s attitude towards her biracial identity relate to your own experience?

IE: I've been quite lucky in that a lot of my roles have really explicitly been exploring someone grappling with their racial identity. With An Octoroon, because that was my first job and I was just trying to do a good job, things hit me afterwards. With that one, [the character] hated her Blackness. It's really been a journey for me as well, exploring my own racial identity and some of the privileges and challenges that come with being racially ambiguous. It depends who's looking, and you see Tanna navigate some of that as well, so that was interesting for me.

I don't know if we have a precedent yet for how we make sure we take good care of ourselves on jobs that tackle very personal themes. But I think on Washington Black, a lot of the cast and crew had quite personal connections to the story or aspects of the story. And for me as well, it was a real lesson in trying to lead with openness, be aware of the own limitations in my experiences, and meet with people who are from the Caribbean, who are from Africa, who they don't know what their heritage is because they've been denied—and everyone's different relationship to their own Blackness. I felt really good to be a part of that.

MC: When you were building your character, how did you imagine Tanna's mom?

IE: I had this idea that Tanna almost imagined her mother as this god-like figure because her time with her was cut short, and ever since then, she's been trying to get back to this time where she felt free and whole and at home. I took a bit of inspiration from the Yoruba goddess Oshun. I saw some different artwork, and this is kind of how I imagined her mother.

MC: How did you build your relationships with Ernest Kingsley Jr. and Edward Bluemel, who play the two love interests, Washington Black and Billy McGee?

IE: There's sort of tension between the two. At the start of the story, Tanna is a little naïve to some of the obligations she might have to face, and there is a reason why her father is strongly suggesting that she conforms to a certain expectation of how she should appear. So, I think McGee represents that obligation and a much more established route to a future. But he's also more charming than she would like, considering that she's like, No thank you. He offers her security and even wants her to embrace some bits of herself—playing the piano and things like that.

Whereas Wash, I think, is the first person in her young adult life who really sees her for who she is. She's felt so disconnected from her own Blackness, so I think there's something about Wash, which also feels very important to her in that aspect. But also because she has been denied a lot of the experiences of being an unambiguously Black person in that time period, there are quite a lot of limitations of her understanding. So, there's a lot of risk involved in her relationship with Wash, but you see them start to understand each other better over time as they grow as people.

MC: If Tanna met Billy casually and there was no arranged marriage from the start, do you think that she could have grown to love him?

IE: Quite possibly. For the first two minutes that they know they meet each other before Tanna knows the situation, I think she's like, Oh, who's this guy? The three of them [Tanna, Billy, and Wash] [are] all interested in carving out their own identity, even if it's unconventional. I think, as well, though, at the start of the story, Tanna is a little lonely because she has been denied a sense of community. So I would hope that she wouldn't end up with McGee just like the first person who came along who was nice. I'm glad that you see her get to understand more of herself through the different relationships she forms along the course of the story.

MC: Tanna is very clear about wanting to build a legacy for yourself. What do you hope your legacy will be?

IE: Truthfully, I always really wanted to be involved in climate conservation. When I hoped to grow up to be an actor, I saw how actors could use their platform to talk about important issues and use their wealth to try and do something useful about it. I know there are arguments about, Should you speak on certain things or should you just shut up and do your job? But I would like to live a life where I try to do minimal harm—I don't think you can do no harm—and try to always lead with curiosity. I really hope for the future that we can find a bit more of a sustainable way to live with each other and our environment. That's my hope.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Ahead of Love Island: Beyond the Villa's premiere, Craig, Kateb, and Page sat down with Marie Claire to test their kinship with a game of How Well Do You Know Your Co-Star?. The trio quickly proved that spending the summer in the villa is the best way to learn everything about a person, as they sped through questions about first jobs, hometowns, and concerts without waiting for the multiple-choice options. They also took the time to share what they think a girl's girl is: "Women over men always."

Watch the challenge above to get the scoop on the classic film that inspired the name of Kateb's beloved dog, a spirited debate over Page's drink order, and Craig's NSFW story about her first concert. Then, head to Peacock to catch Love Island: Beyond the Villa.

But when a young high school girl, Abby (Madison Wolfe), who was dating Jill’s son Brad (George Ferrier), turns up dead, Sophie’s gun is identified as the murder weapon and she becomes the prime suspect. Her past transgressions are unraveled, as are the many secrets of the wives in town, who are all driven by jealousy, lust, and revenge.

Luckily, by the end of the murder-mystery, we have a few answers (even though creator Rebecca Cutter sets up a few more questions for a potential second season). Here’s what to know about the ending of The Hunting Wives season 1, including who killed Abby and why.

Who killed Abby Jackson on 'The Hunting Wives?'

In the finale “Sophie’s Choice,” Sophie realizes that the perpetrator has been under her nose all along. Her new best friend and occasional lover, Margo, killed Abby after the high schooler found out that Margo was having an affair with her boyfriend Brad. When Sophie finally pieces this all together, Margo comes clean and blames the heavy drinking they did that day for her actions, but begs Sophie to keep the truth a secret.

As with all good mysteries, there were a few red herrings throughout the season. First, there was pedophilic Pastor Pete (Paul Teal), a youth pastor who got criminally close to the young women in the church. While he was the culprit for another missing girl mentioned early in the season, he did not kill Abby. The other false lead was Brad’s mom Jill, who openly disliked her son’s girlfriend. She was eager to provide Brad with an alibi for the night of the murder (that also covered her whereabouts), but became a suspect when police found she was one of Abby’s last outgoing calls and when they discovered she had Abby’s phone.

How did Sophie find out that Margo killed Abby in 'The Hunting Wives?'

An offhand remark between the central women in the pilot episode ultimately holds the answer to the mystery. When Sophie first walks in on Margo in the bathroom, Margo asks the newcomer for a menstrual pad. Sophie fishes around in her purse but can only produce a tampon, which Margo says she can’t wear.

But in the finale, after a lustful hookup, Sophie ventures into Margo’s bathroom and asks to use one of her creams. She opens drawer after drawer, examining her lover’s collection, when she happens upon a box of tampons. Margo denies having ever said she didn’t use tampons, but Sophie’s memory of the day is crystal clear. She leaves abruptly and searches reasons why someone might not use a tampon, finding her answer in a listicle: “after having an abortion.”

From there, Sophie realizes that the abortion that Pastor Pete believed Abby had was actually Margo’s—a fact that Brad corroborates. Sophie confronts Margo at her home, who admits that Abby was furious after finding out about her boyfriend’s affair, which is why she was in the woods near the lake house. In her drunken haze, Margo grabbed the nearest gun—Sophie’s—and killed Abby.

Does Margo go to jail at the end of 'The Hunting Wives?'

No. By the end of the eight-episode first season of The Hunting Wives, only Sophie and Margo’s erratic brother Kyle (Michael Aaron Milligan) knows the full truth about what happened. Margo tries telling her husband Jed (Dermot Mulroney) to get ahead of any potential political fallout for his campaign, but he’s so furious about her breaking their “no other men” rule that he slaps her and kicks her out before she’s able to confess. Sophie seems ready to come forward to Detective Salazar (Karen Rodriguez) and the private investigator connected to the one-eyed man, but her altercation with Kyle in the finale postpones those conversations.

Who else is murdered at the end of 'The Hunting Wives?'

The first season of The Hunting Wives doesn’t end with only Abby’s cold body—there are at least three other murders in the show’s final episodes. With some evidence pointing to Brad’s mother Jill, Abby’s mom Starr (Chrissy Metz) takes it upon herself to confront the woman she thinks murdered her daughter. Starr arrives at her home, rifle in hand, but we only see the aftermath of their meeting when Margo and Callie appear at Jill’s home to check on her. When they arrive, Starr is unconscious in a pool of blood.

Jill turns the gun on her friends, too, but before she can pull the trigger, Callie shoots her dead. Margo and Callie don’t hide this from law enforcement and manage to play off what happened as self-defense. (Callie’s husband being the county sheriff sure helps as well.)

The other potential suspect, Pastor Pete, also doesn’t make it out of season 1 alive. Detective Salazar connects his cinnamon gun and vodka to the other missing girl in town, thinking that he was also responsible for Abby’s death. But instead of cooperating with police, he turns the gun on himself and dies by suicide. When the police can get into his car trailer, they find two kidnapped women in the back—including the one Salazar was investigating.

The final murder of the series is Margo’s drug-addled brother Kyle, who stalks Sophie on behalf of his sister after Margo confesses that her new friend knows the truth about who killed Abby. He tries to run Sophie off the road late at night, menacingly thumping the hood of her car and eventually threatening her with his gun. Her survival instinct kicks in and she hits the accelerator straight into his body, killing him instantly.

But Sophie doesn’t just hit and run. Setting up a potential second season, season 1 ends with Sophie rolling Kyle’s body to the edge of a cliff and pushing it over to drown in the water below. Before she does, though, she answers a call from Margo on his phone. Sophie doesn’t say anything and instead just breathes heavily on the line, letting Margo know that something nefarious happened to her brother.

Do Sophie and Graham stay together in 'The Hunting Wives?'

Though Sophie is no saint, her husband Graham might deserve the Worst Husband of the Year Award. While she’s being investigated and eventually arrested by the police for her alleged involvement in Abby’s murder, Graham fails to stick by his wife’s side. He asks her to stay elsewhere (a.k.a. the seedy motel she’s forced to live out of) and only apologizes after her name is cleared and she comes home. But when she does return, she admits that she hasn’t been the same since her hysterectomy and that she’s not sure if she can find herself with him. He suggests counseling and offers to move their family back to Boston, both of which she refuses while she figures out what she wants.

Seemingly in the spirit of wanting to work things out with Graham, she later admits her affair with Margo. He’s appropriately angry (cheating is cheating after all) and goes to Boston for a few days to clear his head. While it seems like their marriage is only hanging on by a thread, the worst part is that Sophie was ready to give it all up for the woman who framed her for murder.

Akerman and Snow are joined by an ensemble cast in the series, which drops on the streaming service on July 21, 2025. Ahead, we break down the secrets and lies of the main characters and highlight the actors playing them in The Hunting Wives.

Malin Akerman as Margo Banks

Margo is the leader of the Hunting Wives, a socialite group of affluent wives in Texas. “Margo's magnetic charm and the group's intoxicating allure awaken Sophie’s dormant passions, leading her down a treacherous path lined with jealousy, deadly suspicion, and murder,” the show’s logline reads.

Malin Akerman, 47, is a Swedish actress best known for her roles in rom-coms like 27 Dresses, The Proposal, and The Heartbreak Kid. She also gained recognition for the comic book film adaptation of Watchmen, where she played the character Silk Spectre II. On TV, she appeared in Lisa Kudrow’s cult-loved HBO comedy The Comeback, Trophy Wife, Childrens Hospital, and Billions.

Brittany Snow as Sophie O'Neil

Sophie is an East Coaster who moves to Texas with her husband Graham and becomes acquainted—and obsessed—with the titular group led by Margo, Graham’s boss Jed’s wife.

Brittany Snow, 39, has been acting since childhood, first breaking out on the CBS soap Guiding Light and the 2000s NBC drama American Dreams. Since then, she rose to prominence via films like the Pitch Perfect franchise, John Tucker Must Die, Hairspray, and more. Last year, she had a recurring role on the hit Netflix drama The Night Agent.

Dermot Mulroney as Jed Banks

Jed is Margo’s ultra-wealthy husband, who inherited his family’s generations-long oil business. But his marriage doesn’t stop him from crossing the line with other women. In the trailer, Jed flirts with Sophie, putting his hand on her thigh and offering an ominous, “I won't tell if you won't.”

For rom-com fans, Dermot Mulroney, 61, is a familiar face: He starred in My Best Friend's Wedding, The Wedding Date, Must Love Dogs, The Family Stone, and more entries in the popular genre. Mulroney has also appeared in other genre films, including Zodiac, Insidious: Chapter 3, and Dirty Grandpa. Not a stranger to TV, he acted in Showtime’s Shameless, Prime Video’s Hanna, and NBC’s Chicago Fire.

Evan Jonigkeit as Graham O'Neil

Graham is Sophie’s well-meaning husband who works with Jed at his new job. According to TV Insider, “He doesn’t realize he’s moved his wife and daughter out of a big pond full of small fish and into a small one teeming with sharks.”

Evan Jonigkeit, 42, is best known for playing the villain Toad in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. Following that, he appeared in the Kurt Russell-led western film Bone Tomahawk, the culinary series Sweetbitter, the comedy anthology Easy, and the Netflix supernatural horror series Archive 81. He is married to Girls actress Zosia Mamet.

Chrissy Metz as Starr

Starr is a single mom and devout Christian who is not part of the elite socialite circle that Sophie finds herself entangled in. Despite her daughter Abby dating the reverend’s son and star basketball player Brad, she is not welcomed into the inner circle by Margo and the group.

Chrissy Metz, 44, rose to prominence for her role on the NBC hit drama This Is Us, for which she won two SAG Awards alongside the ensemble cast. She lent her voice to Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny, and also appeared on American Horror Story: Freak Show and the films Sierra Burgess Is a Loser and Breakthrough.

Jaime Ray Newman as Callie

Callie is a talented marksman and second in command of the Hunting Wives group behind Margo, by virtue of being married to Sheriff Jonny. But, according to Deadline, “she is also deeply in love with Margo and jealous of Sophie’s newfound influence.”

Jaime Ray Newman, 47, got her start on General Hospital and appeared on the cult hit teen drama Veronica Mars. Newman has also starred on Eastwick, Stargate Atlantis, and The Punisher. Along with her husband, Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv, she won an Academy Award in 2019 for producing the Best Live Action Short Film, Skin. Most recently, she starred in the 2024 Sundance darling Exhibiting Forgiveness and the Emmy-winning series Dopesick.

Katie Lowes as Jill

Jill is the Reverend’s wife at a megachurch in the Texas town. According to Deadline, “she’s trapped in a loveless marriage, and as a result, she is overly invested in her son Brad’s life.”

Katie Lowes, 42, had a slew of guest roles on shows like Rescue Me, The Sopranos, and Without a Trace before landing a breakout role on the Shonda Rhimes hit Scandal. She also appeared in Rhimes’s Netflix series Inventing Anna and made her Broadway debut in Waitress in 2018.

Madison Wolfe as Abby

Abby is a well-meaning, very pious teenage girl who’s been raised by her single mother, Starr. She experiences problems with her boyfriend Brad, who has been pressuring her to repeat their intimate moment together on prom night, though he is not the most faithful to her.

Madison Wolfe, 22, is a Louisiana-born actress and singer-songwriter who began work as a child star. At 7, she was among the leads of The Conjuring 2, and she and her older sister, Meghan, both appeared in the acclaimed first season of True Detective as the younger and older versions of Detective Martin "Marty" Hart’s (Woody Harrelson) daughter. In recent years, she’s held roles in horror movies like Malignant and The Man in the White Van, and focused on her music career, with her debut EP dropping in 2024.

George Ferrier as Brad

Brad is Abby’s boyfriend and seems to have it all from the outside looking in. But behind his rich upbringing, handsome good looks, and promising athletic future, Brad is hiding a few secrets, including an “emotionally incestuous relationship with his mother Jill, and an affair with one of his mother’s best friends,” per Deadline.

New Zealand actor George Ferrier, 24, is best known for appearing on Netflix’s Sweet Tooth. Before that, he starred on the Peacock series One of Us Is Lying and the New Zealand show Dirty Laundry.

In a perfect bit of casting, Wonders and Pidgeon were able to draw on their lifelong friendship—having met in community theater in the fifth grade—while playing once-estranged friends bonded by their trauma. In honor of the horror movie's release, the stars sat down with Marie Claire to test their kinship with a game of How Well Do You Know Your Co-Star?. The pair breezed through questions about their first jobs, first cars, and first kisses, pulling from their memories of growing up in the Detroit suburbs.

Watch the challenge above to get the scoop on their shared love of Wonders's The Studio castmate and Pidgeon's Tiny Beautiful Things co-star Kathryn Hahn, the college theater review that still haunts Wonders, and which famous Kevin is their celebrity crush. Then, head to your local theater to catch I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Turner is the typical “difficult to work with, but good at his job” type of cop, making him both an adversary and an ally to his colleagues in the Parks Department. As he gets closer to the truth about Jane Doe, many of his colleagues are called into question.

But Turner’s not completely clean either: The investigator is still coming to terms with the death of his young son Caleb and his subsequent divorce from Jill (Rosemarie DeWitt), and the two are also not letting on what they know about the disappearance of a patron named Sean Sanderson (Mark Rankin). By the end of the six-episode binge-worthy drama, Untamed answers almost all of the questions it puts forward during its run. Ahead, find a breakdown of the ending of Untamed.

Who was the Jane Doe in 'Untamed?'

The Netflix miniseries begins with a gripping scene: two climbers on the famed El Capitan peak are suddenly accosted by a falling body that gets tangled in their cables. Once rescued, park personnel find bullets in Jane Doe’s body, realizing that this wasn’t a fall due to a death by suicide, but rather something more sinister.

As they set out to identify the girl, newbie ranger and Turner’s new partner, Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago), finds an old newspaper story about a missing 7-year-old that looks eerily similar to Jane Doe. Vasquez uses facial recognition software to confirm the identity of Jane Doe as Lucy Cook (Ezra Franky), a young girl who was assumed to be killed by her father, Rory (Scott Vickaryous), following her mom Maggie’s (Sarah Dawn Pledge) death.

Who murdered Lucy Cook in 'Untamed?'

As is customary for murder mysteries, Untamed has a few red herrings before landing on the truth. Initially, Turner believes that Lucy’s involvement with an underground drug operation was instrumental in her demise. But despite connecting the pill bottles marked with a gold X found in Lucy’s belongings, the drug dealers are a dead end.

Turner’s next hunch is the park’s wildlife management officer, Shane Maguire (Wilson Bethel), after Turner finds a video of Maguire interacting with Lucy before her death on her phone. Maguire’s lonerism, rough edges, and army background make him a prime suspect—he and Turner even face off in a brutal shootout—but ultimately, Maguire isn’t responsible for murdering Lucy.

In fact, her death is far more personal. Turner requests Lucy’s parental DNA matches, which reveal that Rory is not her real father; Turner’s mentor and chief park ranger Paul Souter (Sam Neill) is. Turner confronts Souter, who fesses up about his affair but begs that Turner not tell his wife. As Souter unravels, he admits that he placed Lucy in a foster home in Nevada (though he claims he didn’t know the family was abusive) and that after she returned to the park, she began blackmailing him for money. In an attempt to scare her (but not kill her), Souter shot Lucy, which resulted in her eventual death.

The confession is painful for both Turner and Souter. Equipped with the truth, Turner leaves the conversation with the intent to turn Souter in. But before he has the chance, Souter pulls out a gun and shoots himself.

Who is Sean Sanderson in 'Untamed' and how did he die?

Aside from the mystery surrounding Lucy’s death, the question of Sean Sanderson’s disappearance in the park hangs over Turner and Jill’s heads. While they’re on Lucy’s case, another officer investigates whether Turner was in the right state of mind after his son Caleb’s death to lead the charge on the Sanderson case. Initially, he is defensive. But after finding out the truth about Lucy’s death, he concedes that he shouldn’t have been in charge of the case.

At the same time, it’s revealed that the Sanderson case is personal for both Turner and his ex-wife Jill: He’s the man who killed their son Caleb. Jill explains that Turner found video footage of the incident via motion cameras that were set up to track migration patterns, and the couple felt that arresting him for the crime wouldn’t have been enough. They didn’t want to live in the limbo of awaiting a trial, so Jill instead paid Maguire to contact, blackmail, and kill Sanderson.

Turner was unaware of this plot, only finding out after Sanderson was reported missing. According to Jill, this betrayal led to the end of their marriage.

What happens with Special Agent Kyle Turner and his ex-wife Jill at the end of 'Untamed?'

By the end of the miniseries, Turner packs up his truck and drives out of Yosemite, finally putting the ghosts of his past to rest. He leaves his horse in Vasquez’s hands, with a note jokingly reminding her to feed the animal and a box of Caleb’s old toy cars for Vasquez’s son.

After an attempt to die by suicide, Jill also seeks to put an end to her agony by coming clean to her new husband about her involvement in Sanderson’s death. However, the series isn’t definitive about whether he will accept her confession.

On this week's episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk", Crawford gives listeners a taste of that wisdom and opens up about her career, from Miss Teen USA to TV host. One topic she doesn’t hold back on? People who put “rich” at the top of their dating wishlist.

Crawford says that financial imbalances in relationships are "difficult, very difficult. This is why I tell everyone to stop manifesting a rich man, because that's not going to do anything for you."

Instead, the former Catfish host encourages people to manifest something else entirely. "There are a lot of rich people who are very cheap and very close-fisted and will not buy you a damn thing—and will actually put you on an allowance. I’ve seen it happen. So, I tell everyone to manifest a generous partner."

And generosity, she adds, isn’t just about money.

"Generosity is like—who is this person when I'm six months pregnant and I want an Oreo McFlurry? He's going to go out there and source it for me,” Crawford says. “He's going to drive 45 minutes, if that's where the next McDonald's is, and he's gonna go get it for me. … Generosity is: I'm folding my laundry, but I'm gonna fold yours too, because it's right here."

Of course, generosity can also mean material gifts (beyond McFlurrys). But Crawford warns that if you’re only focused on a partner’s income, you might not end up with the kind of thoughtfulness you actually want.

"Sometimes they’re getting you gifts that they like for you. Doesn’t mean it’s something you actually want,” she says. “Doesn’t mean they’re actually paying attention to what you like."

While Crawford doesn’t believe in manifesting a rich partner, she does think it’s fair to look for someone financially responsible.

"I've also dated people who were frivolous with money that they maybe didn't have, and you don't want that either," she says. "You also don't want the person who's been working on their business plan for the past 30 years and hasn't made it happen."

Crawford learned a lot about relationships during her six years as the co-host of the MTV docuseries Catfish, and from countless conversations with her five sisters and close friends. She sees Relationshit as a natural extension of those chats.

"I love to yap. I'm a yapper by nature," the Ex on the Beach presenter says. "I love to talk about these things, and I'm not here pretending like I'm some expert in every single facet of relationships. I didn't study it in school. This is not something that I have a degree in. But the messages that I get from people—all kinds of different people from all different walks of life—saying that listening to you has made me realize my worth, has made me leave that bad relationship, has made me leave that toxic job. I couldn't have imagined that I would have that impact on someone."

For more from Crawford—including her advice on making friends as an adult and what competing in pageants is really like—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

The two were focused on other people for most of the show, but eventually explored their romantic connection and even made it to the finale, where they came in second to winners Amaya Espinal and Bryan Arenales. Now that the Islanders have returned to the real world, fans are clamoring for any news of Nicolandria's future as a couple.

Below, read on for a breakdown of everything you need to know about Nic and Olandria's relationship, including whether the pair is still dating post-Love Island.

What happened between Nic and Olandria on 'Love Island USA' season 7?

On night one in the villa, Olandria Carthen, a 27-year-old elevator/escalator professional from Decatur, Alabama, met Nic Vansteenberghe, a 24-year-old registered nurse from Jacksonville, Florida. During the first-impressions coupling, Olandria chose to kiss both Nic and Taylor Williams before pairing up with Taylor because she liked that he was an Oklahoma cowboy. Though they were in separate couples, the season 7 premiere later ended with a blindfolded kissing challenge, where Nic chose to smooch Olandria, and Olandria picked Nic and Ace Greene (though we can forget about the latter).

Though Nicolandria was born in week one, both Olandria and Nic spent the first part of the season building deep bonds with other people. Olandria was very loyal to Taylor from the start, despite their relationship being a very slow burn. She even chose to rekindle her relationship with Taylor after America briefly paired her up with Jalen Brown, a Georgia truck driver and Southern gentleman. Meanwhile, Nic coupled up with Belle-A Walker, but then he instantly formed a connection with bombshell Cierra Ortega. After he chose to couple up with Cierra, the pair remained locked in for several weeks.

Then came Casa Amor, the Love Island tradition where the current roster of Islanders are split into two separate villas to meet a whole new set of bombshells. Both Nic and Olandria tried to find a match—Olandria got along with Zak Srakaew, while Nic showed interest in Jaden Duggar—but after 24 hours in Casa, both Olandria and Nic were left single. In very emotional scenes, each of the day ones was "dumped" and said tearful goodbyes to their friends...before they were whisked away to a private date!

Nic and Olandria were allowed to stay on the show if they coupled up and went back to the main villa. This didn't not feel like pure Nicolandria fan service, but, as Nic pointed out to Olandria, he was attracted to her from the start, before they both explored other connections. The pair even gave their coupling a fair shot, sharing the best kiss of the entire season as they tested whether they had any non-platonic chemistry. Unfortunately, Olandria still had her mind on Taylor, and it didn't help that she was now back in the same villa with him. The day after the kiss, Olandria told Nic that she didn't feel anything romantic with him, and millions of viewers groaned in frustration.

At the end of Casa, Nic had a genuinely emotional reunion with Cierra (complete with a fake-out that he was eliminated). Though Cierra had coupled up with Nic's tether Elan Bibas, she chose to resume their coupling; three days later, Cierra and Nic became the season's first closed-off couple. Meanwhile, Taylor stuck with Clarke Carraway, his new connection from Casa, and Olandria was saved by the Islanders to remain in the villa. At first, Taylor kept things open with Olandria, but he was obviously more smitten with Clarke. During the infamous Stand on Business challenge, Olandria called him out for dumping her for Clarke so easily. This was the final straw for Taylor to go all-in on Clarke and cut off any possibility with Olandria.

So, with one week left in the villa, Olandria was essentially single, and Nic was in an exclusive couple...until Cierra left the villa due to resurfaced racist tweets. With so little time left, the now-singles quickly coupled up and their friends-to-lovers arc, but a week didn't give much time to progress. Still, they both fully leaned into their attraction after sharing a bed, even sharing more kisses outside of challenges, and they were very adorable during the fake-baby challenge. During Family Day, they finally learned how much America was rooting for them to get together from the start of the season. (Nic's mother and sister are the ambassadors of Nicolandria Nation.)

For their final date, Nic and Olandria were dropped off on a deserted beach to pick up heartfelt messages-in-a-bottle from loved ones and well-wishers along the shore. Their declarations of love were similarly emotional, as Nic reminded her that he was her secret admirer all along (remember the blindfold kiss?), and they promised to continue exploring their romantic connection outside the villa. They ended the show as season 7's runners-up, with the promise to visit each other's hometowns as soon as possible. (After all, Nic's mom is waiting!)

Are Nic and Olandria still together after 'Love Island USA' season 7?

Though Nic and Olandria haven't officially become boyfriend and girlfriend (or "become exclusive," as the term girlfriend seemed to be taboo this season), the pair have been attached at the hip since leaving the villa. There are plenty of Instagram and TikTok Live clips going viral that show how cute and flirty they remain, and fans also spotted them on a group date with fellow Islander couples Chelley and Ace and Taylor and Clarke at Disneyland.

Nic also opened up about his time on season 7 in a solo appearance on the "Chicks in the Office" podcast. He confirmed that he and Olandria are going at a comfortable pace, enjoying each other's company, and doing "boyfriend and girlfriend things" without putting pressure on themselves. (Some of their current plans include visits to Decatur and Houston, and college football games.) He also said that Olandria is a bit shy and is slowly getting used to being in the public eye, but has been a huge support system for him since leaving the villa.

Nic also addressed the Cierra of it all, admitting that he was lost and confused after she left, and he was only given a vague explanation at the time. (Zak previously revealed on TikTok that the Islanders were told that Cierra had "broken some of the policies in [the show's] guidelines.") Nic also revealed that he had considered leaving after she did, but he changed his mind, telling himself, "If whatever is happening in the outside world is something I don't align with, then [leaving] could be perceived as me supporting that." He added that he's still processing what he's seen about Cierra and hasn't decided whether he'll reach out to her.

Meanwhile, Cierra briefly shared her thoughts about Nicolandria on the day of the LIUSA finale, when she shared a tribute post for her time on the show. In a comment, she wrote, "And for the #nicolandrianation…they are two people I care deeply for and absolutely adore. I’ve always wanted nothing but happiness for each of them in this experience. that has never & will never change ❤️‍🩹."

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Of the four couples, L.A. influencer Iris and former pro basketball player Pepe had the least time together as a couple, as they spent the rest of the season exploring other connections. However, fans are wondering whether their strong friendship could continue building into love outside of the villa. Below, read on for a breakdown of Iris and Pepe's time on Love Island USA, including whether the pair is still together after the show.

What happened between Iris and Pepe on 'Love Island USA' season 7?

Iris Kendall and Pepe Garcia entered the Love Island USA villa at the same time, joining as bombshells in the second week alongside Jalen Brown. Even though Iris, a 25-year-old L.A. native and spray-tan artist, seemed most interested in Ace Greene and Nic Vansteenberghe, viewers soon voted for her to couple up with Jeremiah Brown, solely to break up his toxic relationship with Huda Mustafa. Jeremiah and Iris didn't seem to go any deeper than friendship vibes, but he did choose to couple up with her again to make a statement that he and Huda were done. This means Iris's initial season 7 journey was mostly sacrificed to the drama, until guest host Megan thee Stallion brought in a new bombshell, TJ Palma.

Meanwhile, Madrid-born former pro athlete Pepe, 27, also found himself in a love triangle upon arriving in the villa. He spoke with Amaya Espinal and Cierra Ortega early on and seemed to get along with each of the women, but he had instant physical chemistry with Hannah Fields. Hannah was torn between him and Charlie Georgiou, but after giving it some thought, she decided to focus on Charlie. Literally minutes later, host Ariana Madix revealed that America had voted for Pepe to couple up with Hannah, and Charlie was subsequently dumped from the island.

Hannah had a serious crash-out over Charlie's sudden departure, but this is a reality dating show, so she was soon able to pick herself up and begin building a solid connection with Pepe. However, after a week as a couple (which is a month in Love Island time), both Pepe and Hannah were voted in the bottom 6 for America's favorite Islanders. The safe men of the villa saved Pepe and dumped Jeremiah, but the women chose to dump Hannah instead of Amaya or Iris. So now, Pepe was left single as a solid couple was torn apart.

Fast-forward through Casa Amor week, and Pepe and Iris were still on separate Love Island journeys. Pepe had coupled up with Gracyn Blackmore throughout casa and into the villa, but he still couldn't stop thinking about Hannah. Meanwhile, Iris explored things with Zac Woodworth in Casa, but she was still very into TJ, so the pair coupled up upon reuniting at the villa. By the Hate to Burst Your Bubble Challenge, Pepe and Gracyn had essentially broken up, while Iris and TJ were one of the show's strongest couples. Of course, by the curse of season 7, TJ was dumped from the villa in said challenge, along with Gracyn and three other Islanders.

Iris was devastated by TJ leaving, to the point where some viewers were surprised she didn't leave with him. (TJ told Us Weekly that she initially wanted to leave before deciding to stay in the villa, and he supported her.) After some requisite mourning, Iris and Pepe realized they were single at the same time, and that their friendship could grow into something more.

Though they paired up late in the show (around the same time as eventual season 7 winners, Amaya and Bryan), the pair definitely had a physical spark, and they were genuinely adorable with their Family Guy baby names during the fake baby challenge. Plus, they both live in the L.A. area, so they wouldn't have to deal with long-distance woes. Iris and Pepe eventually made it to the finale as the season's second friends-to-lovers saga (along with Nicolandria), and ended the show in fourth place.

Are Iris and Pepe still together after 'Love Island USA' season 7?

As of July 15, neither Iris nor Pepe has given interviews or spoken on their relationship status following the July 13 finale. Unfortunately for shippers, it looks like the pair will continue exploring connections outside the villa. (I'm sorry, I had to.)

On the night of the 14th, TMZ spotted Iris and TJ reuniting and looking pretty cozy, with the outlet reporting that the pair "went on a walk-and-talk for about two hours" before going to his rental, where they met up with former Islander Austin Shepard. TJ had previously told US Weekly that he was planning to meet up with Iris and talk things out after she left the villa.

Meanwhile, Hannah told PEOPLE after her exit that she felt she had a "super mature" connection with Pepe, and that it had felt "deeper" than the one she had with Charlie. While she said she was up to talking to both of them in the real world, she also said she had her "fingers crossed that maybe [Pepe] goes back out and he's single."

Of course, the final word on their relationship will come from the pair themselves, but it'll be interesting to see where things stand between Iris and Pepe (and TJ, and Hannah) by next month's season 7 reunion.

Though Amaya and Bryan only had a short time as an official couple on the show, their fairytale courtship won America's hearts, and the pair became the first Latino couple to win Love Island USA. Now, fans are clamoring for any news of the couple's future outside the villa. Below, read on for a breakdown of Amaya and Bryan's relationship so far, including what the pair has said about life post-Love Island.

What happened between Amaya and Bryan on 'Love Island USA' season 7?

Amaya Espinal, a 25-year-old registered nurse born and raised in N.Y.C., entered the villa in the first week of season 7, joining as a bombshell along with Hannah Fields. Unfortunately, Amaya had a rough time on the series out of the gate. At her first recoupling, Ace Greene chose to pair up with her, but he also continued to explore his connection with Chelley Bissainthe. Amaya called this out as "player behavior," which offended Ace (even though it was true). Things got worse when Ace felt uncomfortable with Amaya calling him "babe" and getting upset that he wasn't putting in as much effort with her as he was with Chelley.

After several days of being essentially single, Amaya next coupled up with Austin Shepard, who had begun to show more interest once it became clear that his match, Chelley, was set on Ace. However, once Amaya and Austin were coupled up, he immediately did a 180 and said that her naturally affectionate vibe was too much for him. Despite being so unlucky in love, Amaya made quick friendships among the Islanders and remained safe during the votes, making it through to week 4.

Meanwhile, when 28-year-old finance and real estate guy Bryan Arenales joined the show as one of the Casa Amor boys, he didn't immediately show interest in Amaya. Instead, he quickly coupled up with Andreina Santos and stayed with her all through Casa and into the villa. Amaya continued to go through it; after the Casa first impressions, no one chose to couple up with her. The next day, she set her sights on Zak Srakaew, and he decided to pair up with her instead of Olandria Carthen.

By the time everyone returned to the villa, a familiar pattern was repeating, and Zak was cooling off. Everything came to a head in the Stand on Business challenge; when Austin wrote a letter to Amaya that she cried too much and moved too fast, both Ace and Zak (her current match!!) piled on. However, before Amaya ran off in tears, one boy chimed in to have Amaya's back. Bryan explained that being affectionate was part of Latino culture, and calling people "babe, mi amor, mi vida" was common. This moment was the first time viewers saw Bryan and Amaya share a connection (and, low-key, that Bryan stood out from the crowd).

Andreina had started to ignore Bryan to explore others by then, so he and Amaya began to really explore each other. (He also begins putting in work before Amaya's popularity is revealed during the Burst Your Bubble challenge.) Finally, Amaya found someone to keep up with her whirlwind pace and even appreciate her for it. It only took the pair a few days to become one of the villa's strongest couples, and they even became the first couple of the season to spend the night alone in the Hideaway.

After the Hideaway, Amaya and Bryan sailed through the end of season 7. During their final date, when they looked through a photo album of their baby pictures, Bryan asked Amaya to be exclusive, and they became the only official couple heading into the final ceremony. (This season was bleak, y'all.) Their declarations of love were absolutely adorable, with Amaya calling Bryan someone who "embraces the waterfall of my emotion," and Bryan calling her "Mi diabla, mi ángel, mi loquita," which translates to "My devil, my angel, my crazy girl." (Both pet names and Bad Bunny lyrics!)

Are Amaya and Bryan still together after 'Love Island USA' season 7?

Unsurprisingly, Amaya and Bryan are still stunned after winning the show, taking home $50,000 each, and finding out how massively popular they are in the real world. Appearing on TODAY two days after the July 13 finale, they explained that they're leaning on each other for support as they get used to their viral fame.

When asked whether their relationship was real or just for the show, Bryan held up their intertwined hands. "I'm so happy to be here with her, and trust us, it's real," he said, with Amaya adding, "I'm also a bad actress and a bad liar, so I think people will be able to catch on quickly. I need Botox after this; he makes me smile so much."

Though we'll have to wait a bit to see how their romance evolved outside the villa—don't worry, they're near-guaranteed to attend the season 7 reunion—the pair has shared their plans for the prize money. Speaking to host Ariana Madix on Instagram, they both shared that they want to donate a portion of their winnings to charity, with Bryan mentioning mental health awareness in particular.

"I wanna give back to a community, that's one of my biggest passions—[which] he asked [about] early on—is just me leaving a positive impact [on] a group of people who are in need," Amaya said.

In another world, Chelley and Ace could've been the strongest couple out of the gate—with a fairytale story of a pair who met in the real world, didn't pursue it due to geographical distance, and were able to spend six whole weeks deepening their connection. Instead, they spent so much time exploring other Islanders and getting caught up in drama that by the time they finally locked in, it was too late to make it to the July 13 finale. Still, once the dust settles, Chellace could be one of this cohort's most solid couples, long past the season 7 reunion.

Below, read on for a breakdown of everything to know about Chelley and Ace's relationship, including whether the pair is still dating outside of the villa.

What happened between Chelley and Ace on 'Love Island USA' season 7?

Ace Greene, a 22-year-old dancer and content creator from L.A., arguably had a leg up upon entering the villa. Not only did he already have a million TikTok followers before joining the show, but he also met a familiar face on night one. He and Chelley Bissainthe, a 27-year-old day trader from Florida, had already met and had a casual online flirtation before they were both cast on season 7. (They've confirmed that they were contacted separately to join the show and were not dating before the series.)

Despite having obvious chemistry, Chelley and Ace were very open to exploring other connections. Chelley was initially paired with Austin Shepard after Yulissa Escobar stole Ace from Chelley during the first night of coupling. (Yulissa was removed from the show in episode 2 due to resurfaced racist posts.) However, during the first recoupling, single Ace decided to couple up with eventual winner Amaya Espinal instead. This...did not go well, as Ace clashed with Amaya Papaya's naturally touchy, lovey, too-pure-for-this-world personality.

This established a pattern that kept up for most of the season, with Chelley and Ace continuing to check in and get to know each other even as they explored other connections. After Amaya, Ace had a brief flirtation with Iris Kendall, but most of his time was taken up with planning cute dates for Chelley (and on behalf of his bestie Taylor Williams) and conducting his campaign against Jeremiah Brown. Meanwhile, Chelley stayed coupled up with Austin—who was annoyed about his love triangle with Chelley and Ace despite putting the bare minimum effort in towards Chelley—for a while, and had a flirtation with Charlie Georgiou.

Finally, in week 3, Ace chose to couple up with Chelley, and the exploring was done...until Casa Amor. This year, each Islander had to couple up with someone entirely new during Casa; Chelley paired up with Chris Seeley, and Ace first chose Vanna Einerson, before he and CoCo Watson coupled up for the rest of Casa. When it was time to return to the main villa, both Chelley and CoCo chose to couple up with Ace (while the women were wearing matching yellow dresses and hair flowers), and Ace chose...Chelley!

So, does the will-they-won't-they couple have smooth sailing from then on? Of course not, but this time it's Chelley exploring two connections. Chris had coupled up with Huda Mustafa post-Casa, and Ace and Chelley weren't closed off yet, so it was fair game. However, that tricky situation quickly came to a head with this year's Heart Rate challenge, where Chelley got mad at Huda and Ace (mostly Huda) for going too far while making out. Before Chelley and Ace can really get into the struggle of establishing boundaries when it comes to exploring other people, Chris quickly takes a step back from Chelley and decides to focus on Huda.

From this point on (or you could argue that the Hate To Burst Your Bubble challenge was the pivotal moment), Chelley and Ace finally lock in. They discuss their childhoods and bond over similar experiences of growing up in poverty. They raise twins during the fake-baby challenge. Chelley organizes one of their cute dates for once! By the third-to-last episode of the season, they're spending the night in the Hideaway (which only two couples did this season!?) and having the exclusive talk. Unfortunately, as evidenced by the pair landing in the bottom three for all the Burst Your Bubble polls, public opinion was already set against them by the time they actually showed their compatibility. So, after they enjoyed Family Day, Chelley and Ace were dumped from the villa on season 7's penultimate episode.

Are Ace and Chelley still together after 'Love Island USA' season 7?

Like with Taylor and Clarke, Chelley and Ace left the villa as an exclusive couple and plan to continue their relationship after the show. The pair told outlets that they will be long-distance for a bit, but that Chelley does have plans to move to L.A., where Ace lives.

"We are going to take our time day by day," Ace told Variety. "We are still getting to know each other outside of villa life. Life is completely different from what America gets to see. I’m excited to grow our relationship and improve our communication, especially since she’s in Florida. I’m in L.A., but she’s looking to move to L.A., and we’ll go from there."

Chelley added in an interview with Vulture, "Eventually, I am moving to L.A. That’s something that’s gonna happen. When exactly, that’s still the question mark. But we’re definitely gonna navigate long distance. With us being the intentional people that we are and knowing what we want, it’s not gonna really be a challenge."