Not every story has a happy ending.
“Love is Blind’s” Brittany Wisniewski and Leo Braudy, who got engaged after meeting in the pods during Season 7 of the reality dating show, called off their engagement soon after, with the producers also abruptly cutting them out of the show.
“Brittany and Leo were not one of the six couples chosen by producers to continue their journey in Mexico,” a card shown midway through the fifth episode read. “They took their own trip to Mexico and broke off their engagement weeks later.”
Brittany and Leo least likely to say ‘I do,’ says producer
While “Love is Blind” does not always follow all the couples who get engaged in the pods, given that it is not logistically possible, this was the first time a couple was cut out like this.
Creator and executive producer Chris Coelen told Variety that the decision was taken on how the show is scripted and produced and the fact that the producers did not have faith in Brittany and Leo’s love story.
“There are different ways that non-scripted shows are produced,” Coelen told the media outlet. “Sometimes you have an idea of where things are going while you’re filming. And we don’t. We film everything as it happens, and then after it ends, we piece together how we got there.”
Coelen further said the decision over who to follow is based on which “couples we think are authentic.”
“When we make that decision as to who to follow, if we have more couples that got engaged, we make a decision as to which couples we think are authentic,” Coelen told Variety. “And when I say authentic, I mean most authentically likely to actually be at the altar and say I do. Who is really genuinely on that path? We felt, at the time, that the six couples we did end up following were the ones that felt more, on a gut level, had a real shot to say “I do” — that they were really invested in saying “I do.” The couple that I think we felt least likely to do that were Leo and Brittany. So, we made a decision not to follow them after the pods ended.”
However, Coelen added that he thinks the two could “certainly” be there at the reunion.
What happened between Brittany and Leo in ‘Love is Blind?’
Leo and Brittany broke off their engagement in Miami following the show and have since opened up about what happened behind the scenes that made them go their separate ways.
While in the pods, Leo was torn between two women: Brittany and Hannah. Leo, in an interview with Netflix’s Tudum, said he connected with Brittany at a deeper level and referred to Hannah as his “twin flame.” Eventually Leo chose Hannah but as fate would have it, Hannah told him that she’d already committed to her other connection, Nick D., sending Leo into a spiral.
Brittany, on the other hand, said “knew it was Leo” from the earliest days in the pod and felt uncomfortable and resentful about being his second choice.
“I was surprised that he had another connection, because I felt so strongly,” Brittany told Tudum. “When I found out he was asking us both our ring sizes, I was very just taken aback. I can’t rack my brain [about] how my future husband could be torn between me and another person.”
However, Leo pursued Brittany and made an effort to convince her he wanted her. He was partly successful because when he proposed to Brittany, she said yes, despite not being able to say “I love you” to him.
‘Most awkward moment’
When the doors opened and the newly engaged couple met for the first, things did not go down too well with Brittany describing it as the “most awkward moment” of her life.
“I remember I saw her, and she’s super beautiful,” Leo told Tudum. “But I could tell when she looked at me that I wasn’t quite her type. It’s totally fine, but I could just tell.”
Brittany said she sensed a shift in energy during their first meeting, that caught her off guard, asserting it had nothing to do with the way he looked.
“It was the most awkward moment of my life,” Brittany told Tudum. “I was surprised, because I’m very intuitive. I could talk to [him] behind the wall and have this emotional and intellectual connection, but in person, I was like, ‘Oh, f***. This is not my husband.’ He was proposing [again], and I was like, ‘This is not right.'”
In another interview with People, Brittany said she “felt every single human emotion possible in that 20 minutes and I was completely overwhelmed.”
“I wasn’t surprised with how he looked — I pictured two versions of him and he was one of the versions exactly to a tee that I pictured, so I wasn’t really thrown off by that,” Brittany told People. “But I was thrown off by how I felt when he proposed, because immediately I was like, ‘I don’t think this is right.'”
“It was an energy thing,” she continued. “I just didn’t feel the things that you would think that you would feel when you’re getting proposed to, despite having such a strong connection. I don’t think it was [a physical disconnect], to be totally honest. I do think he’s a very attractive guy and he has such a very strong magnetic presence in person when you’re next to him, which I adore, but it was just an intuition. I can’t explain it.”
‘Weakest couple’
While Leo was confident the two would be able to fix things on the romantic retreat to Mexico because he liked her “more than she liked me,” Brittany told Tudum she knew they would not be going “because we were the weakest couple.”
Leo told Tudum he “felt crushed” when he found out he was not going and Brittany said she initially “didn’t process it,” but then “just cried.”
“It was very overwhelming, because I felt so strongly about him,” Brittany said.
After their journey on the show ended, the two took a trip to Miami to see if they have a future together, but eventually called it quits.
Both Leo and Brittany said they had a wonderful time in Miami but didn’t see the engagement progressing into a marriage and decided they were better off as friends.
“We had a lot of conversations throughout the trip, and mutually came to the conclusion that we just didn’t see it turning into marriage,” Leo told People.
Echoing Leo’s stance on the relationship, Brittany said “the chemistry just wasn’t there” between the two even though Leo “checked off a lot of the boxes of what” she wanted in a man.
“The physical connection just simply wasn’t there, honestly,” Brittany told People. “He’s just not my person.”
