On a show filled with explosive personalities and dramatic relationship twists, it can be something of a compliment to come out of The Ultimatum: Queer Love with questions mostly about your hair care routine. Despite not making waves on the show, season 2’s Bridget Matloff has become a beloved Internet personality for their refreshing online presence, nuanced takes on queerness, and killer fit pics. I had the exciting opportunity to sit down with Bridget for a conversation not just on the juicy insider tidbits of what goes into filming a reality dating show, but on the deeper, more challenging duties of presenting (and questioning) queer representation, identity, and conformity. Thank you to Bridget for takes on the reality of “reality” TV, how filming the show has affected her and her relationship, and just what products do they use for that envious curly mullet?

Autostraddle: How did your thoughts about marriage change while you were on the show?

Bridget: I know it looks like I changed my mind and decided I wanted to get married. But the reality of it is that we met in the middle somewhere. For me, I had this idea of marriage that was very set and traditional, and I didn’t really understand why I would want something like that. Then I came to an understanding of like, no, it’s actually just this thing that we can define ourselves. And it sounds so simple like that, but I think for me, it was the word marriage, and having to make it government-official and whatever. I just was rubbing up against it the wrong way and reframing it as just, it gets to be what we decided is. That was really the hurdle. Then I got over it.

Did you feel like being on the show is what helped you develop that personal relationship to the word and to moving outside the confines of the word, or did that feel outside the show?

Talking to other queer people specifically about marriage. That’s not something I would typically talk about with my group of friends. I mean, I could, but most of them would feel the same way that I feel. So I think it was helpful to hear other people who come from different walks of life, and from different areas and have different reasons for why they do or don’t want to get married and different definitions for it. That was eye-opening in a way. I haven’t dealt with the same struggles that other people have dealt with. I can understand the meaning of marriage in that way and the privilege of marriage in that way, not to say that it’s for everybody, though, at the same time. But it was getting to talk to people from different backgrounds.

What aspects of your relationship do you wish viewers had seen on the show?

Yeah, I think just like any of our relationship! They don’t show a lot of the “original couples,” as they like to call them. They don’t show much of their relationships. You just see the little last night together or whatever, but you don’t really see what the dynamics are, what the relationship is like before going into dating week. So it would have been nice to establish that, and get to see that, and understand where people are coming from, and let the audience decide their opinions on the relationship and where they see challenges or areas for improvement. All of that is left up to just how we self-describe. And a lot of people aren’t as self-aware as they think they are — it’s like an unreliable narrator. You can’t judge for yourself because you haven’t seen it. And then you only see once they’ve gone through this traumatic, and for some people heartbreaking, experience. So obviously a lot of people are acting like the worst version of themselves, which I don’t think is a fair representation of them or of their relationship, just from what I know of a lot of these people.

Are you saying you wished that there had been a week before anything happened, such as cameras following y’all and seeing how your life was?

I really think they should dedicate the first episode to showing what these people are like instead of just their talking interviews. That’s not as interesting. Just seeing the couple, what their dynamic is. I would say I wish they showed us talking about gender and gender roles because that is something that’s specific to queer relationships and a queer marriage — it’s important, I think, in the discussion of marriage to also be talking about that stuff. And we did all talk about it, and we did all discuss and ask each other’s pronouns, and none of that made the cut. It very much felt edited by a straight person.

How do you conceive of your gender? How do you feel the show failed to show that full spectrum of gender experience and representation?

I’m not militant about pronouns for myself. If people just use she/her, that’s totally fine. If they just use they/them, that’s also totally fine. I’m not as pressed about that personally. I’ve had the privilege of carving out this very accepting community where I live, in both places that I’ve lived as an adult, and I don’t think about my gender all that much until I am in environment like I was in on the Ultimatum, because all of a sudden you are immersing yourself amongst people that aren’t part of the community you’re in all the time. You remember, especially with the way that we had to talk about certain things, that the world hasn’t quite caught up. And so then gender is more on your mind because you’re being forced to be in an environment you wouldn’t normally be in, or I wouldn’t normally be in. I’m really lucky that I get to live in a super liberal area in East LA. I hang out with a lot of other queer people who feel similarly about their genders. We’re not needing to proclaim anything or explain ourselves to the people that we meet and that’s really lucky.

But obviously, sometimes, you have to go see your family or you have to go to a wedding for an old friend, and you’re going to be in these other environments where it’s so different. Being on the show is another one of those environments. Even though you’re on a show with queer people, most of the production, so most of the people you’re around, were straight. And they’re the ones conducting the story. I haven’t thought about my gender in that way in a really long time.

I know there’s been a lot of discourse about whether the host should be a straight woman, and how between her and y’all there’s that lack of understanding. I mean, I have no idea what she was like, I’m sure she seems fine and lovely. 

But she has to bridge the gap between queer people and Reba fans.

Exactly. How it creates a dissonance, like she may not even know what questions to ask queer people about the situation they’re in. So, yeah, I can imagine that could be kind of uncomfortable.

It was sort of strange. There’s no more valid way to be queer. There’s just a million ways to be queer and to express yourself. As a whole, a lot of the cast — I know Marie and Ashley in particular were talking about how they didn’t always get to wear exactly what they would normally wear outside of the show, like Ashley loves to wear snapbacks, and shops mostly in the men’s section and then Marie usually wears Doc Martens, but production wanted her wearing heels. You can tell what the production’s preference is. I’m not going to say they force you to do anything, because I can’t say that. And technically they don’t. I ended up wearing what I wanted by the end, but there’s definitely a hand in. You can tell there’s a suggestion and there’s approved outfits and non-approved outfits.

And probably trying to portray very particular ideas of lesbianism or queerness that are consumable to a straight audience. Why did you choose to be on the show? As an individual, as a couple?

So Kyle was annoyed with me because her lease was up and we weren’t moving in together because I wanted to hold off. In the past, in my last relationship, I had moved in fairly quickly, and I felt like there’s more to be gained by waiting until you’re desperate to move in together. I just think, you have the rest of time to live together and you want to do it when you’re really, really ready. And so she was standing on the curb waiting for someone to come pick up something she had sold, and she got served the ad on Instagram or something to apply to the next season of The Ultimatum: Queer Love. So she filled it out, and I think it was kind of a joke. I don’t think we thought we were going to go on at any point, and I especially was like, “We should not do that show. That’s crazy.”

And then we just kept moving up in the interviews, but at no point did I really take it that seriously. And then it got to a point where I realized this is a crazy experience and a chance to see a totally different reality. And I was very curious about that, and I also just thought it would be a crazy experience to have together. The worst thing that could happen is that it speeds up us realizing that we’re not aligned enough to be together. The worst case scenario is speeding up the inevitable. I didn’t think it would cause something to make us break up that wouldn’t have ever happened in the real world. The risk was obviously there of losing your partner, but I didn’t think there was a risk of causing something that wouldn’t already happen. You still are who the two of you are. This just might bring out something that speeds things up in either direction.

We were both feeling frustrated with our situation. It’s a struggle in LA. Everyone’s hustling, and we were feeling between things. And it was a good time to take a departure from thinking about our careers and thinking about next steps and this and that and the hustle. For me personally, it was a good distraction from something really hard that I was going through personally, unrelated to our relationship. So I think I was just a little lost and thought, okay, here’s this thing I can do to completely take my mind off of this tragic, horrible thing that I am thinking about 24/7, you know? I would say my thinking at the time was “this will take my mind off this thing.”

It didn’t work. Like, I was just alone and handling it. My best friend had passed away literally three weeks before filming. I honestly was not going to do the show — I was like, okay, I need to just go to New York and spend whatever time he has left with him. And then he passed, and luckily I was there and got to spend time with him. But I didn’t think it was going to happen that quickly. So I went to the memorial and, five days later, we flew to Miami. I was fully not going to do it because I wasn’t going to miss out on those last few months with him, and then he passed and I was like, “well, what do I do now? Like, what am I doing with my life?” And all of my mutual friends with him were all in New York. So I was already alone in LA, and I think I was just kind of like, yeah, why not? Let me just do it.

I’m so sorry to hear that that happened. I can imagine that makes the experience that much stranger.

It was just a lot of emotions. Yeah.

So glad you got to have a really emotionless vacation in Miami immediately after.

Yeah, not traumatic at all!

I don’t have to include that in the interview if you’re not comfortable with that.

You can. It’s fine. When I was on the show, I didn’t talk about it because it was so fresh, but now it’s been over, it’s been a year and a half. But thank you for asking.

Is there anybody that you keep in contact with, Ashley or anybody else? Do you feel like any of those relationships have stayed and been significant since filming or since the show came out?

We were all in a group chat together when it ended. I and others were really adamant that we don’t want to contribute to the harassment or bullying of anybody, and we want to protect each other. There are gonna be a lot of people out there who want to tear us down. So the least we can do for each other, regardless of how we feel about one another, is to not contribute, not add to that, not pile on. Not saying you must defend everyone, but don’t add to it. I think that was wishful thinking. But that being said, most people are still in that group chat. It’s not super active, but from time to time, people will chime in. We’ve seen each other at some events. I still talk to Ashley, Marie, Dayna, and Magan pretty regularly. And I talked to Mel sometimes too. I would say I’m on good terms with everybody, though.

I think that’s really, really admirable to have that impulse to be like, hey, even if we don’t like each other, let’s not contribute to what is very hard to do, open your relationship and yourself up to the world’s opinions.

Literally. Watching the first season and seeing how villainized Vanessa was, I was just like, this isn’t okay. This poor girl is getting bullied online every day. She got a shit situation already on the show having to go through that heartbreak very publicly, and then on top of that, nobody’s standing up for her. She was just getting so much online hate, and I don’t think anyone deserves that. She’s not evil. She’s not a bad person. So I think watching that, none of us wanted that to happen to anybody on our season. We were all in agreement about that.

Give us the play-by-play of your decision to reach out to Ashley the night before Choice Day to lock it down. Had there been any spark between you prior? 

So Ashley had been mainly dating Mel and Dayna, and I had been mainly dating Pilar and AJ. I knew Pilar and Kyle were going to choose each other from pretty early on. And then with AJ, I got to a point where I didn’t feel like we were really getting past this surface level, pickup line conversation. We would have small moments, but every time we met back up, it felt like we had to get through all of that again. And I was just feeling like, I don’t know if I can do that for three weeks in a trial marriage, and I don’t know if she’ll be like this in a trial marriage. Probably she wouldn’t have because at that point then, you’re locked in with somebody, but I didn’t know.

And Ashley was the next person after them that I was seeing. You only really have a handful of real dates. The first two days, it’s 10-minute dates with everybody, then 20-minute dates with four or five people. And then you have the hour-long dates. So she was the only other person I had a long date with, and we spoke at both mixers as well. So it’s not like we were dating very much during the dating week, but she was next up after the two that I was dating the most. And they showed our date, actually, in like a deleted scene. I don’t know what outlet that came out on, but it was somewhere that they released it like when they released the second batch of episodes. So that was kind of how I landed on Ashley just because she was the next on my list of people I got along with and was talking to. And I think the same for her. She was mostly seeing Mel and Dayna, but they were choosing each other. So then I was next on her list. So it just worked out.

The two of you as a couple, as well as you as an individual, flew under the radar more than others. Is that how it’s felt for you?

Listen, we didn’t hook up and we didn’t fight. So I think expecting anything more out of screentime would have been unrealistic. Which I was fine with because I was already not totally comfortable going on this show. I’m sad for Ashley because I think that she would have liked to share her story, and she deserved that. We very much saw a one-sided story with her relationship with Marita. Anyone with half a brain knows that not buying flowers isn’t really about the flowers. It’s obviously something deeper.

I think we had a lot of great conversations. We got so comfortable with each other and were really trying to do the most for each other and for ourselves. So we were really comfortable calling each other out and being brutally honest with one another in a very loving and caring way. And you saw her opening up to me. Of course, that’s the scene they decide to include because it’s dramatic. You saw her talking about her domestic violence history. And I think that shows the amount of trust we built with one another. So I wish they would have showed more of that honesty and trust between us. I think that was a lot of what we talked about you didn’t really get to see. Because production just wanted to dramatize it and sum it up in a petty way.

Okay, here’s a fun question: What hair care products do you use? Or what is your hair routine?

So I get asked this a lot. I needed to cut my hair before I went on the show, and I don’t know why I didn’t. But it was very humid there. And so that’s why it doesn’t look how I prefer it to look. But my routine, when it’s wet, I put in two products: Briogeo curl cream, and adwoa Blue Tansy. Those are the two things I just put on, and then ideally let my hair air dry for as long as it can, and then I’ll diffuse a bit when it’s 80% dry. My new thing that I do is sometimes I’ll take a hair straightener and put it on the lowest heat setting and run over everything a little bit, just to loosen it. But I don’t always do that. I did that today, but like, it depends on how I’m feeling. I have a tutorial on my social media if people forget. 

Rumor has it, you were Gabby Windey’s “gay friend” on The Bachelor. Is that true? 

Yes, I was her gay friend. I think she would have figured her sexuality out on her own, but probably having a queer friend opened the door for that a little bit because she’s around gay people a lot now. After Dancing with the Stars, after she and Eric had broken up, she was like, “I think I’m like ready now to explore my sexuality.” But even from the moment I met her, she was very open to it.

We’d had discussions, and there’s a reason we were friends. We became friends before she ever did any Bachelor thing. When she had decided she wanted to date, I was taking her to queer events, and so we went to this one queer event where Kyle recognized Robby, because Robby had been on a comedian’s podcast that Kyle likes. And so she was like, wait, I recognize that person. So she went up to them and asked something like, “have you ever watched Bachelor” or whatever, like, do you know who this is? And then, yeah, they hit it off, and the rest is history.

Do you have any regrets about things on the show? Or anything you’re proud of?

I’m glad that I was true to myself and didn’t really feel that pressured by production. I think it’s hard, though. I don’t have any regrets, but I know it’s difficult for some of my castmates. Anyone in any high pressure environment is going to maybe not act how they would act outside of that. And so I don’t think it’s a fair reflection necessarily. I think we all did the best we could in a really stressful, weird situation. I try to take everything with a grain of salt, including my own experience.

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