Warning: this story contains spoilers from episodes 1-6 of Love Is Blind season 9.
NEED TO KNOW
Love is blind… and apparently, a bit messy!
In the latest batch of episodes to drop from Love Is Blind season 9, Joe Ferrucci and Madison Maidenberg got into a heated argument after the cast pool party in Mexico.
The incident happened after Joe, 29, drank too much and decided to leave the party early. But when Madison, 28, returned to their hotel room and attempted to check in with her fiancé, Joe was incoherent. Madison was understandably concerned, but the two started to butt heads as Joe dismissed her questions.
“It was actually worse than that,” Madison now tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. “After you see me go out on the patio, I’m crying, he gets back in bed at some point, they turn off the cameras and they’re leaving. And he pops up out of bed, he’s like, ‘Did dinner come? Where’s the food?’ Completely popped up, ready to go, ready to chat, all chipper. And I just had it, I was like, ‘You need to leave.’ I actually made him get his own room that night.”
“I was so disappointed and so genuinely hurt,” she continues, citing the way he was “so dismissive of me at the pool party to the way that he acted in the room.”
Netflix
“It was really disheartening, that’s how he chose to show up for me,” Madison continues. “Yes, what you saw is exactly how it happened, if not worse, especially because they cut. There’s a part there where, when I wake him up, he’s like, ‘Why are the cameras here?’ And he actually gets mad at me. And the producer was like, ‘Joe, you knew we were filming tonight.” It was disgusting.'”
For Joe’s part, he acknowledges that he had too much to drink and wasn’t his best self in that moment.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard of the term open bar, but I think I took full advantage of that,” he jokes. “I definitely could have paced myself a little bit better, but emotions are high. Everybody’s having so much fun. Then I think I probably got the worst of it.”
“I swear there was one point where in my mind, it just clicked, ‘I got to go. I got to go right now. I got to go take a nap. I am too drunk,'” he recalls. “Went back and slept it off, which I probably needed a little bit more sleep … It was hard to watch.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Noting that he wants to “take some responsibility” for his actions, Joe admits “I know I was at fault there.”
“I mean, I did not need to drink that much, but it was a lot,” he says. “I honestly probably should have brought Madison in the conversation, paid more attention to her. I know that’s what she was wanting, and it probably got away from me.”
Though Madison acknowledges that she wasn’t “a hundred percent sober” either, she notes that she was taken aback at how drunk Joe was — especially so early on in their relationship.
“I definitely wasn’t to that level,” she says, calling the exchange “confusing” and noting that it was an eye-opening experience for them moving forward in the experiment. “I think at that point I was really in observation mode. This is our first time as a couple being in a group setting. This is our first time as a couple in person being together. I mean, we are only two or three days in to actually physically being together. And at that point, I was really just trying to observe. ‘Is this how you operate? Is this how you move through the world?'”
Courtesy of Netflix
Things weren’t exactly smooth sailing for the couple prior to this either. At their reveal, it was clear Joe was not fully comfortable as he had trouble putting Madison’s voice together with her physical being. He also admitted that Madison was not his usual type, later saying he tends to go for skinny women.
Addressing his comments to PEOPLE, Joe says: “I hope it didn’t come off as body shaming or anything like that. I think they asked me, ‘What would’ve been the people that you have gone for in the past?’ My exes and girlfriends are maybe smaller, a little petite, I would say, in physique, and so it probably came off bad, but it was no dig in Madison… Madison is very attractive.”
“But that’s the experiment, right? You don’t know. So, you don’t know. You’re trying to build that emotional connection before, and so that’s exactly what I was there for,” he adds.
He also knows the reveal was “definitely awkward,” but says, “It’s definitely probably more of a me thing.”
“I think she was more comfortable in the situation, but stuff like that, for me, it takes me a little while to get used to stuff in that fashion,” he explains. “It’s such a wild experience, but I think it was more of me just trying to be comfortable in my skin in that situation. I mean, you’re in front of cameras. There’s people around. The stakes are very high, and it’s not a regular thing, where you’re thinking on this for however many months… It was just me trying to get very comfortable with the situation in that short amount of time.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Fans will find out what happens with Joe and Madison’s love story when the next batch of episodes drop on Oct. 8. In addition to the pair, the other engaged couples include: Annie Lancaster and Nick Amato, Ali Lima and Anton Yarosh, Megan Walerius and Jordan Keltner, and Kalybriah “KB” Haskin and Edmond Harvey.
Kacie Mcintosh and Patrick Suzuki also got engaged in the pods, but called things off before the Mexico trip.
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Episodes 1-6 of Love Is Blind season 9 are streaming now on Netflix, with the next batch dropping on Oct. 8.
