Gianna Hammer, a contestant on the fifth season of MTV’s hit dating show Are You the One?, has come forward with allegations that she was “sexually assaulted” by a fellow cast member and “drugged” by production.
In an interview with the Daily Beast, Hammer, 25, alleges that a fellow cast member, whom she did not name, sexually assaulted her while shooting the television program in the Dominican Republic in 2016. She claims that several other cast members intervened and pulled Hammer out of the bed. But instead of firing the alleged assaulter, Hammer claims, producers from Lighthearted Entertainment allegedly convinced her that he should stay, having him sleep on the couch and forbidding them both from drinking alcohol for the remainder of filming. In retrospect, Hammer told the Daily Beast, she felt “disrespected” by the show’s lack of regard.
“I guess [I] really thought about it and was like, ‘Wow, that was really fucked up,’” Hammer said. “They should have never left me in an unsafe position. I’m definitely a changed person after it all.”
Hammer, who shares a two-year-old son with ex and fellow cast member Hayden Weaver, opened up about the alleged assault in a series of TikToks describing her time on the show. Hammer told the Daily Beast that she was taking Zoloft during production and was told she wasn’t supposed to mix the medication with alcohol. Hammer claims that she was given her Zoloft first thing in the morning, under the direction that “it wouldn’t really affect [her] later in the night.”
Hammer told the Daily Beast that she woke up the morning after the alleged assault and “couldn’t really remember anything.” She claims that producers told her that “nothing happened.”
MTV has paused production on the forthcoming season of Are You the One? to investigate Hammer’s allegations. “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,” said a spokesperson for the network. Since the allegations, MTV has also pulled the season from streaming platforms.
Lighthearted Entertainment has denied Hammer’s allegations, but said it “will cooperate with full transparency” with any investigation. “We are confident that any review will confirm the safety procotols [sic] that we have long had in place on the sets of Are You The One?,” the company said in a statement. “We deny the allegations made by the former contestant; throughout the eight seasons of the show, no contestant has reported an incident of sexual assault to Lighthearted.” The production company currently has a casting call for Are You the One? available on its website.
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