The “Age of Attraction” creators knew they were stepping into hot water making their age-gap dating series for Netflix.
During the production process alone, Jennifer O’Connell and Rebecca Quinn found themselves in heated debates over how to set up the experience for their singles, ranging from 22 to 60 years old, but also how to frame it for the audience at home.
They did not want to dip into MILF hunter territory or “creepy old men” tropes but instead spotlight a real-life phenomenon that exists in modern relationships.
“It could have been super ick,” Quinn told TheWrap.
“We wanted to really capture the full person and make sure that it wasn’t – and Rebecca says this all the time – that we weren’t fetishizing the age gaps and that it was more about connection,” O’Connell added.
“Age of Attraction” follows 40 singles as they enter into a dating experiment at a scenic nature retreat in Canada. The catch is, they do not know each other’s ages and are not allowed to ask.
To make things more exciting for viewers at home, the executive producers decided not to tell the audience the contestants’ ages either. The decision of whether or not to display the ages was a contentious one, Quinn noted, split along gender lines.
“All the men were like, ‘You have to tell us from the beginning, because we want to play along,” O’Connell told TheWrap. “And the women were like, ‘No, we want to go along for the ride. We want to try to guess.’”
“Luckily, and smartly, they listened to the audience, who is going to be watching the show, which is women,” she added.
It is not until the committed couples enter The Promise Room that they reveal their ages to each other and the viewers at home. They then have the chance to decide whether or not age plays a factor in their love and if they are willing to enter into the real world committed to one another.
When casting the show, the showrunners specifically wanted singles who were looking for love. They opened up the casting pool to a nationwide search because they were nervous not as many people would be on board for the age-gap concept. To Quinn’s surprise, the concept did not hold people back.
“Oddly, apparently, everyone is open to this,” she said. “I didn’t know that was not a barrier to entry for people, which was nice. Nice to know that everyone’s more open than maybe they would have been a couple years ago.”
The producers cast the singles blind to their ages, as well. Quinn said this gave them an opportunity to play along but to also find contestants who had shock value but were still open-hearted.
O’Connell noted that it was important to the female producers to protect the women of all ages as they entered the experiment. They knew that they may face heightened scrutiny for their intentions in joining the show.
“We wanted to make sure that we were casting women that women would be rooting for no matter what the age,” O’Connell said. “With the younger women, they weren’t going to come off as naive or silly or flaky, like they actually wanted love. And for the older women, they weren’t just like sex-crazed and cougars.”
The dating series featured 40 singles, 20 men and 20 women, spanning nearly 40 years. To the showrunners’ surprise, they ended the dating experiment with 14 couples.
“It was well beyond my greatest dream that we ended up with so many, and most of them were couples with big age differences,” O’Connell shared.
“I had nightmares every night that she had to physically calm me about, which was I thought they’d all be same age couples,” Quinn added. “I was like, ‘We have no show and we have to give back all our money to Netflix.’ I was freaked out about it.”
“But I do think one of the things that was really helpful was staying committed to only picking people that genuinely wanted to find love and that genuinely were going to be open,” she said. “Maybe we missed out on some of the typical reality characters that would have been great TV, but I think we stayed the course.”
Because of their abundance of love matches, the producing team had to cherry pick their top 6 couples. They landed on couples with larger age gaps that they thought had potential to have an interesting journey together. The duo also wanted to showcase couples that had older women with younger men as well as older men with younger women.
Another success the showrunners found was not forcing the contestants to end the experiment in an engagement, as many other dating series do. This intentional choice was to give contestants room to grow together as many of them are at vastly different life stages.
“When you’re dealing with various age groups, who are in different parts of their lives, with kids or careers or complications,” O’Connell said, “it just felt like we needed to respect their lives more, instead of pressuring them to make such a huge decision.”
“We get more success, too,” Quinn added. “There’s more success if the barrier to entry isn’t so challenging and tricky.”
The first five episodes of “Age of Attraction” are now available to stream on Netflix.
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