THE LONGEST DATE
We romanced The Longest Date host Chris Jaftha for his inside scoop about looking for love on reality TV.
SERIES PREMIERE! Season 1 SABC3 (*193) 19:30 Episode 1
Bring the popcorn! Sixteen strangers paired up and sent on adventure sports together while they’re looking for love? We’re swiping right – especially for the trainwrecks! NB!
The Longest Date Season 1 Mondays (from 11 February) SABC3 (*193) 19:30
In dating reality show The Longest Date (2019- current), 16 brave people – who are newly coupled-up by the show’s experts – are looking for love as they take on adventure challenges all over Mpumalanga. Chris Jaftha is the man guiding us through it all as host and presenter and he’s no stranger to romantic danger. “I don’t really date but I can remember one or two dates that felt really long and awkward,” he admits before laughing. “I feel really embarrassed to even actually say this, but I had an incident in Germany, in Mannheim, with one date who wanted to lick my face and smell my armpits. And I thought, ‘Okay, you know what? This isn’t going to go anywhere’.”
AT FIRST SIGHT
As the show’s all-seeing eye, Chris was quick to spot the couples who should go far. “There were certain connections in the bus trip already, but one couple went from barely noticing each other to an instant connection after they were paired in episode 1. The romance was evident from the start of episode 2 and it continued to grow in intensity as the season progressed. It sent a few of the other couples into a bit of a tailspin because they also wanted to have what these two had. Another couple was considered most likely to fall in love by the other couples, but let’s just say that things don’t always work out the way that you think they will…” he teases.
THE AIM OF THE GAME
According to Chris, the couples who really “got” the game understood one important thing: “They came into the game with their hearts and minds quite open to it. They allowed themselves the vulnerability to really make the relationships work,” he says. “The game at its core is really not about the challenges; they are a vehicle to help the couples relate to each other. The couples who understood that fared really well.” The challenges also helped do away with every hopeless romantic and TV producer’s shared terror: dead air. “The content that we got from the couples because they were being put through these extreme challenges was gold. When the pressure hits, it’s like when you squeeze a fruit: if you squeeze a lemon, you get lemon juice. And if you squeeze an orange, orange juice,” says the host.
TO BE REAL
Can you really find love on a reality TV show? Chris believes it’s certainly possible – but the real challenge will be keeping that love alive. “We shot 13 episodes in 15 days [late in 2018]. These couples actually felt after three days like they had been there for two weeks and after six days, they felt like it was two months. And so forth. The more extreme circumstances that you face with your partner, the more you learn about each other and you find out so much to love about a person. But then you have to love the person outside of the circumstances that you found yourselves in. That could be a stumbling block.”