LIB’s Madison Is Proud To Be The Bisexual Representation She’s Wanted

Madison Errichiello was surprised by how much airtime she got on Love Is Blind Season 8, especially considering the show cut a key piece of her dating history. The 28-year-old is openly bisexual, and she tells Elite Daily she shared this with multiple people in the pods. “I definitely thought that would air, because it’s a big part of who I am,” she says. But she’s not too pressed that it didn’t make the cut. “At the end of the day, the fact that I got that much screen time… I was like, ‘You know what? I’m good.’”

She has received her fair share of backlash for the drama that went down with castmates Alex Brown, Mason Horacek, and Meg Fink — but she’s ready to put that in the past and talk more about this part of her story. “I want to show that bisexual people exist, and we are valid,” the Minneapolis-based artist says. “I know there are people who might have thoughts about me going on this show being a bi person, but I still like men. The bi erasure goes crazy sometimes.”

She saw her casting as a chance to represent queerness on-screen. “This is a space I want to carve out in the reality TV world,” Errichiello says. “Seeing how many people see themselves in me is so encouraging.”

Here, she shares more about the conversations viewers didn’t see, plus her pitch for a queer season of Love Is Blind.

Elite Daily: You first spoke about being bisexual on Kaitlyn Bristowe’s Off the Vine podcast, and viewers never saw that detail about you on the show. Can you tell me about the conversations you had in the pods about your sexuality?

Madison Errichiello: The first person I opened up to about it was Ben [Mezzenga], funnily enough. He didn’t really have much to say, but it wasn’t bad energy. He just was like, “OK, cool. Love that for you.”

I had the conversation with Mason and Alex, too. It didn’t feel like I was coming out to them, but more like, “This is who I am. I’ve dated women; I’ve dated men.” No one said anything negative — they just wanted to know about my dating history, how many women I’ve dated, and things like that.

ED: You also revealed on the podcast that you had matched with one of the girls on Hinge before the show. Did you ever think of exploring a connection with one of the other women?

ME: I went into the show knowing I just wanted to find friends among the girls, because I didn’t want to disrupt the experiment. I put anything else out of my mind and figured that whatever happened after the show happened.

ED: Did anything happen after the show?

ME: The girl I had matched with on Hinge reunited with an old flame, so she and I are just besties now. Everyone’s shipping me and Molly [Mullaney], but Molly and I are also besties. It’d be like dating my sister.

ED: Vanessa’s question for Molly at the reunion about whether she’d ever date a girl came out of left field as a viewer. Was there some additional context we were missing?

ME: Literally all the context you have is all the context we had. I don’t think she was quite ready to share that with the world, but she is someone who stands in her power and knows who she is. She wasn’t necessarily coming out as bisexual. She was just like, “I’m open to it.” I think she shocked herself as well.

It makes people scared to explore their sexuality when it’s so black and white.

ED: We saw queerness discussed this season in a scene where Brittany Dodson talked about having dated women in the past. Did you and Brittany have any conversations about that shared experience?

ME: After her conversation with Devin [Buckley], she was really upset, and she came back and started talking about how he didn’t receive it well. We got to connect over our queerness, and I was heartbroken for her. I felt for her, but I think it was closure on her side of things. We’re still really good friends.

ED: Brittany experienced some backlash from queer people for saying she didn’t see herself ending up with a woman. What did you think about that?

ME: It made me so sad for her because she didn’t explicitly say “I’m bisexual.” She just said, “I’ve had experiences with women in the past,” and she’s learned that’s not something that she wants in the future. I think that’s OK. It’s all a spectrum. You’re allowed to explore. It makes people scared to explore their sexuality when it’s so black and white, and I think we need to be a little more graceful.

ED: Who else do you hang out with from the cast, besides Molly and Brittany?

ME: Virginia [Miller], then two girls who didn’t get tons of screen time: Casandra [Barron] and Vanessa [Boreland].

ED: Can you share anything about your dating life since the show?

ME: In terms of my relationship status, I’m keeping it on the down-low. People feel like they have the right to say whatever they want about me, and that’s fine, but when it comes to my relationship, that’s something I want to protect. But I was talking to a friend recently and posted a screenshot to my story that said “Sapphic summer is calling me.”

ED: Obsessed with that. What are your DMs like?

ME: It’s hard to sift through them, but a lot are incredibly supportive — people saying “I see myself in you. Thank you for representing the dissociative girls and the bi girls and the trauma girls.” But then some are like “Can I get feet pics?” There are also a lot of girls hitting on me, which I love.

ED: Would you ever go on TV again?

ME: I probably would. Me and the queer community are banding together to ask for a queer Love Is Blind, and I want to be the host. The love stories that could come out of that would be incredible.

ED: What did you learn from this experience?

ME: Radical self-love. When there’s so much noise coming at you, you have to remember who you are. My therapist is amazing, and I did a lot of work before the show came out to know that I would be OK, no matter which way the Internet swayed. People who speak negatively are often just projecting — they’re judging you off an edited TV show, and I’m not going to change anyone’s mind by commenting back. I stay unbothered.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.