The Powers of Love – Damian Powers is looking for love again on OFTV’s Miss/Match

We first met Damian Powers on the first season of the Netflix sensation Love is Blind. You may remember him leaving his fiancée Giannina at the altar and then showing up at the reunion with Too Hot to Handle’s Francesca Farago. He and Francesca went on to test their bond on Perfect Match. With that relationship now in the past, Damian is resuming his search for Miss Right on season 2 of OFTV’s original series Miss/Match.

On Miss/Match, host Antje Utgaard finds out if she can make sparks fly between two very different OF creators in just one afternoon. On his episode, which premieres on Friday, September 1 on OFTV, Damian sits down with model Lauren Blake and the couple completes in fun challenges to determine if the pair will be a miss, a match, or something more.

We chatted with Damian about his experiences on his quest for love, what makes the perfect date, and the biggest misconception about him in our exclusive interview. We also got to put him in the hot seat for another installment of the Socialite Seven.

First of all, thank you for all the entertainment you’ve provided us over the past couple of years. I’m a big fan of everything you’ve done, and it’s nice to finally meet you “in person”.

Well, thank you so much. It’s an honor to be here. I’m really happy to be able to do this with you today. So excited about everything I’ve done and everything I’m about to do. So really big things coming.

Great. So, tell me a little bit more about yourself.

I went to school a little bit south of Atlanta in Georgia. I went to high school there, graduated, went to college for about two years and then realized that I was accumulating more in student debt than I’d come out making my first year, so I dropped out of school and then sort of went into the work world. My dad always said, if there’s something you can pay someone to do, you can learn to do it yourself, so I learned how to do all my own automotive work, and then I started getting into car sales, and then got into insurance, and then construction sales, and then started rebuilding houses. After I got out of school, I started learning all these trades to where I could learn to do everything myself, and then started making little businesses out of it and growing from there.

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How did you end up on Miss/Match?

I got Miss/Match right when Perfect Match was launching. I had a scene on there where I was butt naked. I got a little excited, took off all my clothes, ran and jumped in the pool. And I was like, well, if my ass is going to be out there in the world anyway, then I might as well start an OnlyFans. I was sort of against the platform at first because of what I had heard it stood for and just making assumptions. So, I reached out and talked to some people to try to get a better understanding, of like, do you have to show full nudity on there? Can you do your own thing? Can you still build a platform from it? And I learned that it’s just a way for your fans to be more interactive personally with you so you can really do whatever you want at your own discretion.

So I started doing OnlyFans and then, about a month and a half later, I started doing really well on there and they reached out and asked, “Hey, we know you just did this other dating show, but would you be interested in seeing if there’s somebody in the OnlyFans creator world that you might match with if you’re still single?” And I was like, “Well, I’m single. Let’s go.”

Now the show, it’s structured kind of like a first date. What is your ideal first date?

I’m very much an in-person type of guy. I like to meet you out and about. I don’t even like to really meet somebody in the bar scene but like, a day party or through mutual friends. I like to go off word of mouth, I guess, or meeting that person myself. So, when I can do that and have a day out with you and actually have a conversation and get to know you personally, more on a deeper level, that’s more of an ideal type of first date to me than going to a movie and not talking for an hour and a half and going to dinner and having a server interrupt you. If I can just have one-on-one time with you and be able to build rapport or even around a friend group, that’s always more ideal to me because it allows you to be more comfortable in your own environment.

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What do you think makes a good icebreaker?

Icebreakers are, I guess, just me sort of being funny. I’m like, “Wow, I’m sort of nervous right now” and sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not. But on Miss/Match, it was like, you’re never comfortable enough going into these like on Love is Blind. When I did that, I was like, I was going on a date my first day with 15 women, seven minutes apiece, not being able to see them. I stayed up the whole night before I did this and I was like, what am I going to ask them? And all I ever wrote on the sheet of paper in like three or four hours was “Do you like to travel?” I couldn’t process it in my head. Like, what do you ask somebody that isn’t offensive that you can build rapport?

It just didn’t make sense. It’s come down to me where I just start a conversation with somebody, and it can be about anything in the entire world or something going on in that moment and then just seeing if we can naturally build a conversation from there. I know there’s a connection if it’s not forced, if we just flow and the conversation is just good and happy and easygoing; and facial expressions come in a lot of that, too, because, you’ll say something to somebody and you’ll see, a smirk, like, what are you saying? That creates an uncomfortable reaction and you’re like, okay, well, this just sort of crashed and burned. So, it’s really just first interactions for me.

When you were first introduced to Lauren on the episode, you were deprived your sense of sight and it made you kind of rely on your other senses. What senses are important to you when you’re meeting somebody?

I think sight is, but obviously Miss/Match and Love is Blind were two shows where I couldn’t see the person initially. Going back to that when they were like, “Oh, you’re going to be blindfolded”, I was like, great. Here we go again. That was one reason I was excited about Miss/Match because I was like, well, I finally get to see them immediately and then I got on there and they’re like, “we’re blindfolding you.” But physical touch is an important one. I think when you touch somebody or you kiss somebody or you get to hold their hand, you get a sense of like, is there butterflies there? Is there some type of little spark where you want to continue to see them? So, touch and sight are probably my two biggest ones.

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You had mentioned on the episode that you’re very well-traveled. What destinations are on your bucket list?

I want to do Croatia and Greece and all the Croatian islands. I haven’t done that yet. I actually just got back from Paris and Italy for a little spontaneous romance trip, just like to see if there’s any spark there with somebody. It went well. It was a fun trip but crashed and burned so now I’m back. I want to do Bali but other than that, just going to continue to do random spontaneous trips, which have been some of the best times of my entire life. And even with Paris, I literally got a call that I could come out to Paris and booked a flight same day with my buddy, and we flew out there. I don’t know what’s next, but either way, it’s going to be a good time.

What is the coolest thing that’s happened to you since you got on all these shows?

That’s such a difficult question. So, they found me on Tinder. I matched with a casting producer, went through this whole process and that’s how initially I was cast on Love is Blind, which was a social experiment at the time. And from there, after the show came out, it was like a trickle effect. I couldn’t go anywhere without people recognizing me. I had such a private life before, so it was a big change. And now I’m being invited to events. I’m finally starting to build a career out of this thing that I never imagined. I’ve never been a huge fan of social media, but now I’m able to use it to do what I want, love and enjoy and that’s travel and hanging out with my friends and creating business opportunities through it. I met some of my best friends in the world through it. And with one of them, we go on private jets everywhere and we’re traveling all over the world. It’s opened at a lot of doors for things that, without me doing these shows, I would have never had the opportunity to do.

One thing I tell people is, if you get an opportunity and you’re scared to do it, what do you really have to lose by not taking it? You miss 100% of opportunities you don’t take and I’m glad I ended up taking that risk, because now like every day is an adventure for me. I wake up and I have no idea what’s going on, you know, like tonight, I got invited to a red carpet event and I didn’t even know about this yesterday. So, it’s just always something cool going on.

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What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about you?

The biggest misconception people have about me is that I am an asshole. I think the way I was portrayed on After the Altar with my ex, Giannina bringing Francesca from Too Hot to Handle to meet her – which is what put me on Perfect Match. Saying no at the altar on Love is Blind when my partner said I do, these things were to protect my partner and it didn’t look like that, but people didn’t see the behind the scenes in what was happening behind closed doors.

Everything I did, I always did out of respect with my partner, and I had full transparency with them. But the way it was shown is that I made rude decisions and embarrassing decisions to my partner, and that wasn’t the case. I’m very considerate of others. I very much care about other people’s feelings, and I always want to make sure the people around me are taken care of. And then once people get to know me and meet me, they’re like, wow, like you are a great person. I love very strong and I love very hard and I always want to make sure friends, family and the people around me are happy and taken care of at all times.

OFTV is really expanding its brand and they’ve got cooking shows and comedy shows. Is there another genre you’d want to get into on OFTV?

Yeah. I definitely want to do more competition-based stuff. Fitness was a huge part of my life in my earlier twenties, and I just got back into it recently. So, I’d like to really expand on physical, fun competition, game-based shows. As far as the dating show thing, obviously, I mean, I’m 0-for-3 now, so I’m just trying to figure out sort of what’s next when I do another one, I would, if it made sense, but also like, I do want a relationship. I do want a wife. I do want kids. At the end of the day, I’m just trying to sort of figure out how to steer away from dating and then just if I’m going to continue this, then, you know, make sure I’m doing it for the right reasons.

Damian Powers Answers the Socialite Seven

Watch Miss/Match online at of.tv or by downloading the free OFTV app for iOS, Android, Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, and Samsung Tizen Smart TVs. Follow Damian on Instagram, Twitter and, of course, OnlyFans.