The much anticipated second season of The Ultimatum: Queer Love debuts June 25th. — and as I was preparing to record a very special Ultimatum bonus episode of To L and Back, I was realizing that I had ten thousand questions about how the show actually works. More crucially, since Season One’s Mal Wright now works at Autostraddle.com, I actually had direct access to answers to those questions and furthermore, could ask them all! And then share those answers with you, right here, right now.

We talked for nearly two hours so believe it or not, this interview has been edited for length.

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“I Don’t Think A Lot Of People Are Going To Watch It.”

Riese: How were you recruited to be on the show?

Mal: In my DMs. When they were first casting, it was only for the Pacific Northwest. The first season of the straight version hadn’t aired yet, so the concept wasn’t out in the world. I had a friend who had a buddy working in casting in LA. She was like, “It’s a queer show and they’re looking for couples and I think you and Yoly would be great for it.” Maybe a month or two later, a casting person came into our DMs separately and referenced my friend. That’s when I was like — “Oh, this might be interesting, this might be real.” Then we were told the premise and went through several interviews.

Riese: Were you at a crossroads in your relationship? Or did you feel like you had to manufacture one for the show?

Mal: Well, I definitely was dragging my feet. I think that was the language that was used. I don’t know that I’d say we were at a crossroads. But I do think that I was taking my time for various reasons, hoping that we get to a point where I was like, “Okay, I trust this now. This has been consistent long enough and let’s do it. I trust it.” Some would call that a crossroads.

Riese: When they told you that the premise involved an ultimatum, did you think this would be good for your relationship?

Mal: I remember being in the last interview like, “Can I mute you guys for just one second?” And muting and then talking to Yoly, and I’m like, “This sounds kind of intense. Granted, I think we have the tools to get through this because we’ve been in therapy weekly for a year now. I think we know how to talk through what we’re feeling. I just don’t know if this is a good idea for us.”

And she was like, “No, I think we got it. It’ll be fine. We can make it.” And I was like, “Yeah, I believe you. We can make it. I guess, you’re right.”

Riese: What made you willing to do that on television?

Mal: My Virgo mind started weighing — I hate to blame this on Zodiac, but I think it’s real. My Virgo sun and my Capricorn moon started weighing the risk involved. And I said, “Okay, let’s see.” I like to think worst case scenario.

They hadn’t even told us yet that it was Netflix, so I thought, well, it’s a lesbian project. I don’t think a lot of people are gonna watch it. I think I’m pretty boring to watch at a baseline — and I say this with a lot of pride, I feel good about not being an entertaining person to watch. So I also felt safe with that because I’m like, “Well, I don’t do the most anyway. They’re not going to get anything out of me.” Also, I go by my nickname on the show. So from a work standpoint, I’m also safe, because nobody knows my nickname but the people I grew up with. I’m not public facing at work, I’m secure in my job, I’ve been there ten years. Also, I’m not usually blonde. At best, this will help Yoly.

Riese: Oh right, the visibility for her career.

Mal: Right — maybe it would give her a little bit of a platform. It might not do anything for us but it could help her. Those were my thoughts. Very naive of me, but I just felt safe with all of those measures that I put in place, specifically going by a different name. Mal is actually short for Malibu. But I can’t be a mid 30s-year-old Malibu.

Riese: No one wants to see that.

Mal: Zero people want to see that.

Riese: Do you regret doing it?

Mal: I don’t feel regret, but I also would never do it again. I feel really humbled by the experience, whether we interpret “humble” in a good or bad way. I respect the process, I get it, I think it works.

Riese: You think it works?

Mal: I think it’s a diabolical way to try things. But I do think it works. I think it’s very real.

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“Is It Better To Be the Favorite Or the Villain?”

Riese: It does seem that there was a universal sentiment that of everyone on that show, you came out looking the best.

Mal: It’s a sweet sentiment when people are like, “you were my favorite.” I’m like, thank you — but at what expense? Your favorite, why? Because you caught a moment of time watching me really be dragged. I don’t know. I always feel weird.

Riese: You feel sort of mixed about that?

Mal: I guess, if there was anything to be won, then that tile might be good? They have you go through a psych eval before you go on and when you get off. And I remember asking them, “Out of all the reality TV people that you’ve met with, is it better to be the favorite or the villain?” And she said they’re similar in experience.

Riese: Interesting.

Mal: PR teams would meet with me and they’re like, “You’re our favorite. Off record, we love you.” But I’m like, “I don’t really know if I love that!”

Riese: Like it sets up a false expectation?

Mal: Because it’s not what I wanted.

Riese: What had you wanted?

Mal: To just go, get it done, and fly under the radar.

Riese: Which is not what happened at all.

Mal: At all.

Riese: Did you feel like being the favorite puts too much of a spotlight on you?

Mal: It’s not realistic. I think it takes away from you just being a full person.

Riese: Right — we all contain multitudes and we all react differently to a diabolical emotional situation you’re being put through on camera.

Mal: I think there’s a lot of layers to people and it doesn’t really leave room for a lot of anything else. Or it just hyper inflates people’s perception of you. And that’s just not realistic at all. I think a Leo might thrive in that light. But I’m not good at that, that’s not really my thing. I am saying this also while knowing full well that I was prom queen.

Riese: So you’re used to being the favorite person?

Mal: In these very small, meaningless worlds of existence, I suppose.

Riese: Yeah I get that. When you were being filmed, did you feel like you were really being yourself 100% of the time? Or were you always conscious of how is this going to come off? How will the edit look? How do I want to seem?

Mal: In the beginning, I was very conscious of that. But after being recorded all the time, you can only do that for so long. They do a really good job of removing you from the things that I think people find safety in, from familiarity. If there are cameras in my home 24/7, I’d be aware of the cameras and I’d know exactly how to act, in the comfort of my own space. I could manipulate what people are seeing. I think when you’re taken away from all of that, you can only keep that up for so long.

Riese: Right — you don’t have anything to ground you at all. It’s all a new experience. Cameras in your own home would be a new element invading something you’re familiar with, you’d adjust to it. Instead, the whole thing is just completely destabilizing.

Mal: All of it. I mean, even down to — they have you pick outfits, where you have to pack a certain amount of outfits for very specific events. And I know that there’s things that work better for camera, but even that small thing distorts you.

Riese: It makes you feel more like you are performing or you’re in a costume.

Mal: There were things that I wanted to wear that in my own fashion sense was like, “I want to wear this.” And they were like, “Yeah, no, that won’t work on camera.”

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“Okay, the show is done now. We have to go back home.”

Riese: Did you really feel like — at the end of this, we will get married or move on? Or was there still an awareness that despite the conceit of the show, this other option existed, which was to continue dating and not be married, and not move on? Or did it really feel like you were heading for a breakup or an engagement for real at the end?

Mal: Yes and no. I mean that you’re here and you’re participating in this—

Riese: Experiment.

Mal:… experiment, which you can’t say. It’s an Experience!

Riese: That’s interesting! Because on Love Is Blind they say experiment. But it’s obvious you can’t say “this show,” they have another word for it.

Mal: And they will correct you on that. “Say what you want to say, but you don’t reference it as an experiment, say experience.”

Riese: Interesting.

Mal: I do also think you immediately think, “Okay, the show is done now. We have to go back home.” So the logistics of actually doing it are just so ridiculous. You have to go back with the person you came with. If you guys live together, you got to go back home to real life and figure out your shit.

We were seeing a therapist, assessing and processing what both of us had just been through. What she was feeling. Would you actually break up your three-year relationship to go pursue something new with this girl in Hawaii? Be fucking for real. Can you guys get along in real life?

Riese: But you left the show engaged. Did you feel like that was really where you were at, at the end of it?

Mal: I really felt like I was trying. I felt like I wanted to figure out our own way to propose. But for the sake of the show, we had to make a decision. Just deciding to work on it when we got home wasn’t an option.

Riese: That is one of the weirdest parts of the show, of Love Is Blind as well, is how they act like it’s either you’re breaking up or you’re getting married. There’s no couple who can just be like, “okay, I’m not ready to get married, but I still want to keep dating and see how that goes.” And on LIB, they make it difficult to do that because you’re rarely hype to date someone who just said “I do not” at the altar to you in front of everyone you know.

Mal: I think for me specifically, when we got back home — she’s mourning this deep connection with Xander, and there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes shit with these couples going on that weren’t shown. It put our relationship in a microwave and blew it up.

We get home — a fight erupts and I’m like, “I actually don’t like how you process things. I actually think I’m done with that.” That is essentially what broke us.  Maybe a few months later. We got into an awful fight and I was like, “No. I don’t know that I could do this with you for the rest of my life.”

She said she wasn’t going to talk to Xander, that she really wanted to focus on us. I’m like, “If that’s something you think you can do, okay. But I’m not telling you not to. I’m just saying focus on your home for a second.” But she was still conversing with Xander, and lying about it.

Riese: It did seem, and maybe this was just all we were shown, but it seemed like you were understanding that it was a connection she might want to maintain.

Mal: I mean, that didn’t come with my own meltdowns and breakdowns. So of course I wasn’t just angelic about everything.

Riese: Yeah, I’m sure. Did you feel embarrassed?

Mal: 100%. Very, very, very much so. Very, very humiliated. Even if I think about it now, I still feel really embarrassed about it. And I think that’s why I haven’t leaned into this hero trope, whatever that looks like or people expect, I don’t, because I’m just like, it was actually quite humiliating.

Riese: Right. You come out as the hero because you were harmed — and you can’t wear that as a badge of honor. “I was so profoundly harmed and wounded, and I dealt with it well! I didn’t lose my shit on camera!”

Mal: It was so crazy.  Not because I deal with things well, but just because it was so insane to me.

Riese: It’s a totally artificial manipulated situation that has no resemblance to real life.

Mal: If this was happening in real life with my friends around and my safeties around — we probably would’ve broken up sooner. ‘Cause they would’ve been like, “Don’t let that bitch do that.” There’s harms that I haven’t even shared.

Riese: I’m sure.

Mal: I don’t even know where to begin sharing it or if I will ever or not, but just the piece that people got is so humiliating to me.

Riese: I understand that. I had a relationship where I feel weird even writing about it; it was humiliating to know people around me saw what this person was doing, while I had no idea. In the story it feels like I’m in a victim role, and I don’t love that for myself, it flattens both of us. Also, I’m sure I said some crazy shit in our fights, ‘cause I was going crazy! You go crazy when someone who you love, who you’re living with, who you’re engaged to is lying to you all the time every day. You know what I mean?

Mal: It’s so crazy. I had a bought of infidelity. Maybe a year and a half before we went on the show. And she likes to bring that up occasionally. Then someone will hop in my DMs like, “You’re a cheater.” What we are skipping past — or she is skipping past — is how we even got there. And I’m like, “geez, do I even crack this open and discuss all of this?”

Riese: Right.

Mal: Like I suggest you bring that under control. Because if I have to, I don’t mind sharing it. But it will absolutely have you cancelled. So let’s not do that. All you had to do was go on a show and not act a fucking fool! That’s all you had to do.

Riese: I want to ask you about it! But also yeah, not here to cancel anyone.

Mal: I want to find a way to be able to talk about it though one day without referencing the person, because it’s less about the person and more about the experience. There was an emotional infidelity, from me. I can own that, but we have to tell how we got there.

Riese: Online recently with younger people the narrative around cheating has become very black and white, anybody who’s ever cheated is abusive, a bad person. I think the part of cheating that can be emotionally abusive is where it’s an active lie they’re telling you, which can drive you insane. But we don’t know what’s going on in any of these relationships where cheating occurs, that we’re judging on the internet from a distance.  Who was driving who crazy first. We’re all human. Relationships as they are falling apart were not designed for public consumption and analysis. Conversely, a person can exhibit emotionally abusive behaviors, and not be an abuser for life. We have to make room for people to grow and change.

Mal: I only call it “cheating” because that’s the language that she used in therapy. I didn’t want to diminish her experience, if that’s what she feels like it was, so that’s what we’ll call it. But I think I was in an abusive situation, and I found solace in a safe person.

Riese: Right, so any black-and-white framing of it just isn’t fair to you.

Mal: Being in abusive relationships is so — it’s such a mind fuck.

Riese: Absolutely. I couldn’t think about what I was doing or saying without thinking how they would feel about it or what they would think of it. You know what I mean? I lost that internal compass, my own mind.

Mal: My mind was not mine, it was no there. And I was like, “Well, I guess I’ll marry you’! But all of that is what I think about when I hear people that are like, “I love you, you’re so sane.”

Riese: You shouldn’t have to be a perfectly innocent hero for people to like you. We’re all complicated.

Mal: I think that the other part is when people are like, “I just don’t believe she’s like that.” And it’s like, okay. “I just don’t believe she processes through shit this way. It’s not real.” And I’m like, “Wait, wait, wait. What?”

Riese: Right, like that was just something you were doing for the cameras?

Mal: I wish I cared enough to do it for that. I’m genuinely, I do recall though, one time in filming, I think they tried to have a moment like, “This is really going to piss Mal off.” And it was a moment when Vanessa had DM’d me, just so you know, Xander and Yoly are still speaking. At that point, Yoly had me stop talking to Lexi. So I call Yoly, asked her how I should handle this DM from Vanessa? Off camera? She told production, ‘cause she was filming at the time. They were like, “let’s get this on camera.”

We go through that moment in the kitchen — there was something that she said, and they wanted me to react different. Production was like, “that’s how she reacts? That’s what she’s going to do?” And Yoly was like, “She’s just not an explosive person. That is just not her. So if you’re trying to get that out of her, it’s not going to happen. That’s not who she is.”

Riese: Do you feel like when you feel like someone’s trying to poke you into an explosion, you’re even more resistant to it if you can sense it’s happening?

Mal: No, but you really have to do real poking. I think the things that make me explode are not that.  I already knew she had feelings for Xander. You know your partner, you just know. I wasn’t surprised they were still speaking. Then she was honest at least about that. I didn’t love it. Because of what she told me our rules were. But the damage was done, beating her up about it wouldn’t undo it. What makes me explode is people intentionally poking me in a really mean way. Or when I just think someone’s being a complete piece of shit.

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“This Season There’s a Two-Drink Maximum.”

Riese: You guys get paid to be on the show as well, right? Are you allowed to say how much?

Mal: We do, but I don’t think I can. We also were allowed to drink whatever we wanted, as much as we wanted. I thought I was getting one over on everybody because I was like, “I’m 10 steps ahead of the game. I’m going to ask for the most expensive alcohol ever.”

Riese: “I’m going to really maximize this opportunity.”

Mal: I was like, “I’m bougie.”

Riese: Top shelf.

Mal: Calle Azul. Top shelf, $300 bottles. They were like, “Great. Get her what she wants.” I’m like, “Oh no, this is not… Didn’t expect this!” But this season there’s a two drink maximum.

Riese: Oh, really?

Mal: I think they ran into some trouble there.

Riese: That’s interesting! Because a lot of reality shows want people to get wasted. So how does Choice Day work? How do they make sure everybody actually matches with someone for a trial marriage?

Mal: Well we have ten days leading up to it. It looks on the show like it happens overnight. But there were 8-10 days where you’re dating every single day. Starting with quick little dates with everyone. Then you rank who you want to see again from most to least every day, right when the day’s done.

Riese: Sounds like sorority rush.

Mal: As the days goes on, the dates get longer with the people in your top, the hope being that you’re also in theirs — which, if the chemistry is there, and you really are vibing, then it’s likely you’ll end up in the top three, one or two. That choice dinner is actually random and real. You could throw everybody off and choose someone unexpected, but they might not choose you back —

Riese: I think Tiff said on TikTok, that nobody chose them — that they all went around to work out the matches and while it made it seem like Sam and Tiff chose each other, it was just that they were the only ones left without matches.

Mal: I don’t think anybody chose them, which is so interesting, right? Because I think they were number two for Yoly.

Riese: Oh, interesting.

Mal: But we don’t get to see that. We don’t get to see all the different dynamics.

Riese: Does production worry about that at all? Like — what if there’s somebody who’s not ranked, nobody wants to date them, or everyone there ranking high is not ranking them?

Mal: I mean, it falls into place because it has to. But not by anybody’s decision, nobody wants to not be picked. But I also think that it falls into place if you actually participate — Tiff didn’t want to be on, they didn’t want to do it, they didn’t want to participate at all. Not even for the sake of — maybe I’m not attracted to anybody here, but do I get along with anybody here? They didn’t want to do it, they just wanted Mildred.

Riese: Yeah, that tracks.

Mal: For me, I don’t know if in the real world I’d run into any of these people, or date any of them. But we were there. I could find friendship with someone for three weeks. That’s easy. Lexi and Xander were my top two.

Riese: That’s so funny that Xander was in your top two.

Mal: I was trying to get masc for masc going!

Riese: But it makes sense. We see that in Season Two, also — the love triangle with Pilar, Kyle and Bridget. It makes sense that two people dating each other might both connect with the same third person. Like how people date their friend’s exes. You’re all on the same vibe.

Mal: Right, and Lexi was torn between me and Yoly, so yeah, to your point. She wrote Yoly a letter.

Riese: Wow!

Mal: Just saying why she was choosing me and not her, but that she absolutely was torn between both of us.

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“Lexi and I Were Knocking on Vanessa and Rae’s Door, Running Away, Putting Shit in Front of the Door.”

Riese: Once you actually get in there, you’re in the same apartment building. How do you avoid running into each other?

Mal: Our apartment complex was huge. There were a lot of different buildings and maybe two or three different gyms, different pools. So it was kind of hard to run into each other unless she just wanted to be deliberate.

Riese: It seems like they changed that. There’s a lot of “running into each other” drama this season, and the most recent straight season.

Mal: Yeah, I think they got a smaller complex. But I will say they did put me and Lexi down the hall from Rae and Vanessa. Literally, doors down. I mean, I was gang gang for Lexi, that was my trial wife. So we were knocking on the door, running away, putting shit in front of the door. We were terrible.

Riese: But not everything is filmed, right? You’re not always being followed by cameras?

Mal: You’re on a schedule they give you a few days or a week ahead of time.

Riese: So do you decide what to do or discuss when cameras are off?

Mal: There were things that if me and Lexi want to talk about off camera, we’d leave the house and go talk.

Riese: When they’re filming, do they tell you “the topic for this conversation is x y z?

Mal: Yeah, there are prompts. Some people need them, but some people don’t. Lexi and I didn’t really need those because we just genuinely had a friendship. They’ll say like, oh do you want to unpack what happened at the party?

Riese: Then do you have to talk about it?

Mal: You could say “no, I don’t feel like talking about it.” It’s helpful in terms of connecting with the person you’re there with, though. It’s very open-ended, it’s not pointed.

I remember going on a double date — me and Lexi, Tiff and Sam. And Tiff just did not want to touch Sam, they didn’t want to put their arm on Sam. They didn’t even want to be near Sam. And it was so bizarre. Production was like, “This is your trial wife, you don’t want to be near her at all?”. And she’s like, “I’m not doing that, no.” They were like, “Okay.” Because then it’s like, the conversation will be “how your trial relationship is going.” Me and Lexi are like, “thriving. It’s great.” And they’re like, “I guess it’s okay.”

Riese: Oh man. That’s so sad.

Mal: Right. Tiff was totally shut down.

Riese: They weren’t going to talk about their discomfort, but it was just radiating.

Mal: Right.

Riese: Sam seemed really nice.

Mal: Sam was fantastic. She’s great.

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“In Queer Friendships, There’s an Element of Romance That Just Exists at a Baseline With Us, Period.”

Riese: Did you feel like there was the possibility of a romantic connection with Lexi or from the beginning, was it just like we’re going to be friends?

Mal: I don’t think so. Here’s the thing I will say — I think in queer and Sapphic relationships, there’s an element of romance that exists at baseline with us, period. Which is why we end up dating our friends or whatever. That is just part of our nature. And so I think it could have felt like that maybe at some moments — of how intentional we were with each other. But I’m not even Lexi’s type, we’re not even each other’s types. She’d never dated a Black person before, she doesn’t even go for masc presenting people.

Riese: Oh, interesting.

Mal: So I’m going to say no. But I do think that there was a softness there 100%, and there’s a romance there and a romancing of a friendship building because that’s just what we do.

Riese: The beginning of a friendship could feel romantic, I think. It’s nice to be with someone who you really connect with.

Mal: And you’re isolated. You’re in this experiment for a very specific reason. So there’s a romance that comes out because that’s what you’re here for.

Riese: When you saw your friends and family, were they really hearing that show premise for the first time on camera?

Mal: Yes. You got to pick three or four different people you’d want to come, and production lets you know a little bit ahead of time who’s actually coming. They have to go through their own interview process too. So when you’re telling them, they’re absolutely like, “This is ridiculous.”

Riese: Were you supposed to present yourself to your friends and family as like, we are really in this trial marriage, this is for real?

Mal: Yeah, you’re supposed to say that. You do present that way. And you’re like, “you’re going to hear language that is probably kind of weird, but this is the thing that we’re doing.”

I remember talking to Lexi’s dad ahead of time, and he was like, “No, I don’t want to fuck this up.” He really took me on like a daughter, but they didn’t show that.

Riese: Wow.

Mal: He came with me to the gym to watch me work out. He was like, “I’m really proud of you, girl.” He was just so cool and sweet.

Riese: He just liked you?

Mal: We still speak. I just went to him on Father’s Day, yesterday. On Father’s Day. I called him. They were eating her dad up online, like “He doesn’t like this.” And I’m just like, “What?”

Riese: They set the friends and family up to be at least confused at the very least.

Mal: They try to keep it that way.

Riese: It’s not hard because you’re presenting something that is completely unhinged to them!

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“At the Reunion, I Wish I Would’ve Taken My Time a Little Bit.”

Riese: If you could go back, would you do anything differently?

Mal: I probably would’ve taken my time at the reunion to really… I was processing so much information and disseminating so much and just so shocked. We watched the whole series the day before the reunion, for the first time.

Riese: So that’s nine hours of television that you were watching right before.

Mal: You get to sleep on what you just saw and wake up and go do it.

Riese: Did you actually sleep?

Mal: I did as well as I could. There was so much going on for me. My dad had just been diagnosed with renal failure, which is super scary. I almost didn’t do the reunion, but I was bound by contract and worried like, “Listen, if anything happens… I need to be able to have access to my phone.” Because you are sequestered again, so you don’t have your devices to reach out to the outside world. And I have to get in and do this, but I might have to leave because I have to go be with my family.

So I was hyped up because of that already emotionally in a weird place. And then I had just watched this crazy ass show — fast forwarded to most of my parts just to make sure I can see the things before because I’m still working for my company. I think I wish I would’ve taken my time a little bit. I was firing off emotional things, some of which I think for the watcher made no sense. I haven’t watched the reunion since. But I could imagine there were things that they’re like, “We don’t know what you’re talking about, but sounds personal. Sounds deeply personal.”

Riese: What kinds of things do you think you were saying that didn’t make sense or that might not have made sense to people?

Mal: I just knew I was so emotional. My rant was so long. I don’t even know how much of it made it, but I was going off for what felt like an hour. It felt like 40 minutes, 30 minutes, just rambling.

Riese: I feel like that’s kind of what they set you up to do though, right? By showing you this. But also you were seeing things Yoly had held back from you.

Mal: There are things I did know about and there were things that I was just like, “What?” I almost wish they would’ve aired the thing about infidelity and cheating at the reunion. I was like, “Fuck it. Let’s talk about all of it since we’re here.” And they didn’t air it, which I wish they did. I really wish they would’ve set it up for me to have a way to talk about it openly.

Riese: Instead of it being something that came out or came out more in a way that seemed sketchy, I guess?

Mal: I felt like I would’ve also had felt a safer way to talk about abuse at the time. I think she still leverages that too — I don’t know what it’s like to be a villain. I can’t imagine the internet doing what the internet does. I don’t know what that feels like.

Riese: It feels really bad.

Mal: I don’t know what that’s like.

Riese:  I think — online, you’re not a person anymore, you’re a story about your worst moments, or what people have heard you did. Sometimes villains are true villains. Sometimes it’s just a person whose story can be slotted into an already-existing familiar template of villainy, until your actual self loses definition, and then that narrative becomes more powerful than the truth, you know? So — I guess, to go back to what you were talking about before — it is a lot like a hero narrative in that way. It’s all an archetype.

But everyone was focused on Yoly and Vanessa and then the underdog villain turned out to be Mildred!

Mal: And her and Yoly have a lot in common.

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What Comes Next For The Ultimatum: Queer Love

Riese: Do you think that they should have a gay host?

Mal: Yes. Although, I also really like Joanna. She’s a stand-up person and an ally for real. It’s not like they couldn’t find a queer host, they chose her intentionally, ‘cause it’s a Netflix production and she’s in Steel Magnolias on Netflix.

Riese: To maybe have a straight audience?

Mal: I know for sure it’s big in the Midwest. And there is a lot of straight interest. They’ll tune in if it’s heteronormative and makes sense to them.

Riese: Is there anything you would like if you could, that you would change about the show or in the way that they do it?

Mal: I would love for it to be less heteronormative and more queer in essence. Different types of couples’ identities and setups. We use the word ‘queer’ but it’s not really representative. They should rename it “Heteronormative Gay Love.”

Riese: It’s also not about queer love so much as it’s about queer drama.

Mal: I don’t love the show. But I do think it belongs in the library of just reality TV.

Riese: Was there anything when you were going into working in casting that you wanted to be sure was represented?

Mal: I absolutely wanted more people of color and I wanted to be a part of that process. Also, often there are questions that keep people out of the running, and I think a lot of times people in the positions to give out these opportunities aren’t aware of that. Are we asking questions that are keeping people off the show? How do we push back on that?

Riese: What kinds of questions do you feel kept people off the show?

Mal: An example would be asking people if they have a criminal record. While it’s important to ask, I think you have to go beyond just rejecting someone outright for having a criminal record and then eliminating them without finding out more. I have a misdemeanor.

Riese: Right. We know that there are ‘crimes’ that maybe all of us have committed, but there are certain people who get arrested for doing those things and certain people who don’t.

Mal: 100%. We know that the judicial system negatively and disproportionately impacts Black and brown folks. So when that’s the first question, and it’s just a yes or no without asking why, that wipes out a whole group of people that might’ve made great television. So for me, it was pushing back on like, well, maybe we want to ask why.

I had a record for traffic violations and served time for speeding tickets. If anyone knows Polk County, Florida, they already know. It’s crazy for Black people there. I was in college and thank God I had the resources and the access to get my record expunged, but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been on the show. Who serves time for a speeding ticket? That’s insane.

Riese: That is insane! Are you excited for the next season to come out?

Mal: I’m anxious. I’m happy for the opportunities I had from this, and for them to have that access, to leverage them in their networks. I think seeing ourselves onscreen in any capacity is really cool. It’s trash reality television but some of it is relatable. It’s cool for us to all equally be like, “Oh my gosh, I felt this and I’ve been through something like this.”  I didn’t see myself on TV growing up. I didn’t have that.

Riese: Was it weird right after when you went out and everyone knew who you were ?

Mal: It was really bizarre — I wish I would’ve thought about that, being in a show that impacts the same communities I found solace in. There was no anonymity in the community I felt safe being in. And I didn’t do a regular reality show, I did a show that blows your life up.

Riese: Yeah, you’re not just yourself anymore. You’re yourself and everybody else’s idea of you.

Mal: There’s something weird that happens with the psychology of people that consume reality TV where it’s like, we think that we’re closer to these people than we actually are.

Riese: Yeah, fans think they really know you.

Mal: Because they’ve seen something intimate happen with you.

Riese: It must have been a really destabilizing time.

Mal: Right, and I got laid off maybe four months before the show came out. They scrapped my entire team. I could have moved over to a different department, but then I was like, I can always go back to corporate America. It’s fine. Then the show comes out. My life is blown up in a weird way that I don’t know how to process. My relationship blows up — a thing where, regardless of the reasons for it, that was my support team, I was hers. So I move back across the country to Atlanta. The year after that, my father dies. And then I moved to New York. So I just got kinda chill. I was being called to New York or LA quite a bit, and I was just like, let’s just try one of them. And I grew up in California. So I’m like, I already done that before. My partner’s here.

Riese: Did Sammy watch it before she met you?

Mal: Yes.

Riese: Was that weird?

Mal: Yes — but then it wasn’t. Because she’s also very public facing or was, in a much larger way to me, just to straight people. I thought it’d be safer dating her, actually? She understands what it’s like to be public facing. You’re here for the right reasons, you know how to handle this. We have the same insecurities with each other.

Riese: So do you think that one day you might give each other an ultimatum? Do you make ultimatum jokes to each other?

Mal: Yes. When the word even comes up, we’re just like… it’s triggering.