Netflix's 'Love Lab' Producer Lee Jin-joo Explains Bold Bed Setup

Producer Lee Jin-joo is back with another dating show, and this time she is testing what happens when the format itself gets stranger. The team behind some of South Korea's most-talked-about reality romance series is moving to Netflix with a daily release schedule and a setup designed to push contestants out of their comfort zones.

A press conference for the Netflix daily variety series The Love Lab was held on June 23 at the Stanford Hotel in Sangam, Seoul. MONSTA X's Joohoney, YouTuber Charles Entertainment, and producers Lee Jin-joo and Kang Yu-min attended the event.

The Love Lab is a dating observation series that drops contestants into unpredictable, unusual situations to see how their romantic instincts kick in.

Lee, who is directing the show, said the concept grew out of ideas that did not fit her earlier projects. "When we were making 'EXchange' or 'Love Brothers and Sisters,' our meetings were never only about one specific program," she said. "A lot of small, scattered ideas would come up along the way." She added that "'EXchange' especially was a long-format show that had to carry 12 weeks with only 10 cast members, so the production pressure was heavy and we were locked into one concept."

"There was a desire to actually try out some of those other ideas," Lee said. "This started as something small, and then it kept getting bigger."

She also addressed the show's more unusual setups, including a blind date staged in bed and an isolated dating scenario. "'EXchange' and 'Love Brothers and Sisters' also had unusual setups, but when the cast acts naturally inside them, viewers accept it naturally too," she said. "So we focused on making sure the cast could participate as comfortably as possible."

On the bed blind-date concept that has drawn early buzz, Lee pushed back on the idea that it was built for shock value. "The bed blind date I had in mind was never meant to be a provocative device," she said. "Meetings don't always have to happen in a meeting room. Sometimes things actually go better when you're lying around at someone's house, just talking. When you go to a jjimjilbang with a friend and lie down and chat, you end up sharing the things you don't usually say."

She said the cast had to be talked through that idea. "I spent a lot of time explaining the intent to the cast," Lee said. "It's less about being provocative and more about whether softer, more honest stories come out when the body is relaxed. The people who ended up joining the show are the ones who understood and agreed with that thinking."

The setup points to a broader shift in how Korean dating shows are being built. As the genre grows more crowded, producers are looking past the standard villa-and-confessional template and toward formats that try to engineer emotional honesty through environment, not just editing.

The Love Lab releases episodes 3 and 4 back to back on Netflix on June 24 at 11 a.m. KST.