Ashleigh Ro WarrenMy show
I went on forty-plus dates in three months on HBO Max. It is exactly as exhausting as it sounds.
Far left. Eight cities. Three suitcases and two 20 lb dumbbells on every flight. Thank you, Delta.
The show is Swiping America.
Three months. Eight cities.
Forty-plus dates. A camera crew, and a schedule that would make a wedding planner lie down.
It did none of the things I thought it would do for me.
It did the one thing that mattered.
I met the love of my life on it.
In the most elaborate lesbian way possible.
Watch it on HBO Max →How it actually works
Forty-plus dates. Eight cities. A day on set looked like this.
You wake up at six.
Hair, makeup, mic pack.
By nine you’re on a first date.
By noon you’re on your third first date, saying the same charming thing you said at nine, and you can hear yourself saying it.
By four you have no idea which one liked dogs.
By seven you are being charming at a stranger on a rooftop and your face hurts from being a person.
Then you go back to the hotel, and they ask you to talk about your feelings to a camera.
On purpose. For an hour.
Filming my own billboard like a tourist.
The character
Around day three, you make yourself a character just to get through the day.
Not a fake one.
A version of you with the volume turned up, who can do date five with the same energy as date one.
It’s a survival move.
It’s also, I now realize, what every creator does every time they hit record.
The character gets you through.
The trick is remembering to turn her off in the hotel room.
The director said she looked like a French movie star. I was looking at her picture going, well, yes.
The producers
They weren’t shit people. I just wasn’t prepared for their job.
Their job is a good story.
They did it well, and I believe they cared about us as people.
Both things are true.
I don’t know how you prepare for someone whose job is to ask the question you’ve been avoiding, at the exact moment you’re too tired to avoid it.
So, from experience: reality TV is not for the weak.
Not because anyone is cruel.
Because the schedule and the questions will find whatever you haven’t dealt with.
92NY. Kim Cattrall asking the four of us about the show.
What it gave me
A big chunk of my thirties, and the person I’m still with.
I went in wanting it to change my career.
It didn’t.
I came out with memories I’ll keep forever, a group chat that still goes off, and a relationship that started on camera and kept going after the cameras left.
Grateful for the opportunity.
Grateful it’s over.
Grateful I’d do it again, which worries me.
HBO Max lobby. Grateful, exhausted, same face.
Where this goes
Start with Wednesday.
This week’s fifty are already written.
You’re the only thing missing.
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