MTV has paused production of the reality TV show Are You the One? after Gianna Hammer, a former cast member, alleged she was drugged and sexually assaulted during filming on her season.
The popular reality TV competition, described by MTV as “the most ambitious dating experiment ever attempted,” pairs cast members as “perfect matches” and charges them with finding each other. Most seasons involve 20 or 22 people, who all live in the same house and generally sleep in the same room.
Hammer starred on season five when she was 21 years old. Now 25, she told the Daily Beast reporter Cheyenne Roundtree she was “drugged” by the production team and sexually assaulted by a fellow cast member that same night. She said producers “downplayed” the incident and failed to remove her attacker from the set.
“I guess [I] really thought about it and was like, ‘Wow, that was really f-cked up,'” Hammer told the Daily Beast. “They should have never left me in an unsafe position. I’m definitely a changed person after it all.”
According to Hammer, who made a TikTok video about the incident before speaking with the Daily Beast, she was put on a low dosage of antidepressant medication before leaving to film Are You the One? in the Dominican Republic.
She said her doctor warned her to never take the pills while drinking, and she’d never experienced adverse effects from the medicine before the show.
However, Are You the One? cast members often receive a lot of alcohol. Hammer said the local medic administered her medication in the morning, rather than her usual evening routine, because producers thought “it wouldn’t really affect me later in the night.”
One night while filming, she got into a verbal argument while intoxicated, so producers took her into a separate room.
“The three producers said that I needed to calm down and that they were going to give me one of my medications. This part of the night is something I remember more clearly than anything else,” she said.
“I know that my castmates said that I kept telling them, ‘I’m not supposed to do this when I’m drinking,'” she continued. “They still said it was OK, they said it wasn’t a high enough dosage or something. So, I took it.”
The next morning, Hammer said she couldn’t remember anything that happened next. According to Hammer, producers pulled her aside and told her that she had gotten into bed with a male cast member; but stressed that “nothing happened,” because other cast members had pulled Hammer out of the bed after they heard her saying “no.”
The response
Hammer said the producers asked whether she wanted them to remove the man from the show; but she felt unprepared to make that decision at the time since she was in a state of shock.
“They made this comment, saying, ‘He flew all the way out here, we did all this testing for him. He has a perfect match in this house. It would be a lot to send him back, he’d have to spend the rest of the time in a hotel by himself,'” she told the Daily Beast.
Hammer said the show’s solution was to have him sleep on the sofa and cut off his alcohol supply, as well as her own. She also claimed that producers made her sign an NDA; that they told cast members who witnessed what happened not to discuss the incident during filming.
“I spent all these years not saying anything while it aired and while it was still fresh in everyone’s minds because I was afraid”.
Hammer continued, “I might as well just come out with it and share my experience. [It’s] lifted a lot off my shoulders. I felt like it’s not something that I have to carry on my back in secret or feel ashamed that it happened.”
Hammer declined to identify the male castmate who she said assaulted her and asked the Daily Beast to withhold his name.
“We take these issues very seriously and have paused production/casting to conduct an independent investigation into the allegations; the third-party production company and further review our internal safety protocols,” a spokesperson for MTV in a statement.
Lighthearted Entertainment, which currently has an active casting call for the show on its site, denied the allegations.
“Throughout the eight seasons of the show, no contestant has reported an incident of sexual assault to Lighthearted,” the company said in a statement; though Hammer said on Twitter that she has “email proof from 2017 reporting my incident to an mtv rep.”
Hammer’s former castmate Hayden Weaver, whom she dated seriously after the show and shares a child with; told the Daily Beast that he witnessed producers giving her an extra dose of medication. Afterwards, he described her as being “unconscious with her eyes open.”
Weaver also reacted to the production company’s statement on Twitter. “Lighthearted Entertainment has denied these allegations,” he wrote. “I can confirm as a witness that Lighthearted Entertainment is full of absolute s—.”
Tyranny Todd, another season five castmate, also corroborated Hammer’s story; describing Hammer as “in and out of consciousness” after taking the pill.
Todd told the Daily Beast that she heard Hammer telling the male castmate “no” before finding him on top of her in bed.
“We went over there to try to get him off of her because we were like, ‘This is weird,'” she said. “I remember just always being really, really mad because we knew that someone took advantage of Gianna. I can remember it clear as day. He was on top of her and to turn around, like, ‘What the f-ck? This is not cool.'”
The Daily Beast spoke with three other cast members on the record, who all reportedly confirmed parts of Hammer’s story. MTV pulled season five from streaming platforms following Hammer’s allegations. MTV, Lighthearted Entertainment, and Hammer did not immediately respond to multiple requests seeking further comment.
