'Love Undercover' stars date people who don't know they're famous. How it went

On the new Peacock dating series, five international athletes pretend to be average Joes while dating a group of American women.

The series premiere of Peacock’s newest dating show, “Love Undercover,” opens with retired soccer star Jamie O’Hara explaining, “Footballers in the U.K. are like rock stars. We don’t have the NFL. We don’t have the NBA. We have football.”

But what happens when they are stripped of that A-list status and challenged to go undercover without their fame and fortune?

That’s the premise of the reality series, which takes five international soccer stars — known as footballers outside of the U.S. — and transports them to Los Angeles. There, they pretend to be normal guys with everyday jobs, like a construction worker or personal trainer, as they pursue relationships.

The athletes have one month to court a group of 18 American women, who, similar to the “Joe Millionaire” format, have no clue they are dating famous soccer players.

In the first group episodes, out May 9, O’Hara, Ryan Babel, Lloyd Jones, Marco Fabián and Sebastián Fassi move into a Los Angeles penthouse filled with cameras as their journeys to find love without their celebrity persona begin.

Meanwhile, the women are told that they are contestants on “a dating show about single American women who want to find love in the arms of an international man,” narrator and comedian Jared Freid says in a voiceover.

As the athletes mention in the premiere, they are used to getting photographed by paparazzi, partying, buying expensive cars and making millions of dollars.

Without those perks, dating is decidedly more difficult. A few minutes into Episode One, they are instantly humbled when they watch the women judge them each solely on one photograph and a quote, and choose which of the five to date.

O’Hara opens up about hearing the harsh criticism and being rejected, again and again, in an interview with TODAY.com.

“It was an absolute killer, an absolute nightmare. I hated every minute of it,” the current broadcaster says.

The former Premier League star, Babel, Jones and Fassi also speak to TODAY.com about struggling to lie to the women and their biggest regrets while filming “Love Undercover.”

Read on to learn more about their venture into the world of reality TV dating and what to expect from future episodes.

On dating in the public eye vs. reality television

Each of the “Love Undercover” stars have been navigating life in the public eye — and the perks and challenges that come with it — in their home countries for years.

O’Hara, nicknamed in the press as Jamie “Hollywood” O’Hara, had his cheating scandal and subsequent divorce covered in the tabloids.

Babel is introduced on the show as “the Dutch player with the 18 million dollar price tag.”

Jones, who was 27 when the show filmed, says he was signed by Liverpool when he was just 15 years old.

Fassi made a name for himself playing for teams in Mexico and Spain, and was born into a soccer legacy: His father, Andrés Fassi, is a big name in football management.

Fabián is an Olympic gold medalist and Mexico soccer legend.

O’Hara says, back in the U.K., he could easily impress a woman with his status and a nice dinner. Dating on the show, in comparison, was a “disaster."

"It was easy to go and speak to people because you had that confidence, to be like, ‘I’m Jamie O’Hara. I’m a footballer and played in the Premier League,’” he tells TODAY.com

With that introduction taken away, he had to “go back to (his) roots a little bit and try and have a personality.” He says "having to speak to girls and they don’t have a f----- clue who you are" was unfamiliar, and uncomfortable.

Fassi welcomed that challenge. He says the nature of modern dating makes it difficult to determine who is actually interested in him for who he is, not what he has. “

‘How would I do without my football suit?'” he says he wondered before filming began. “‘Are they gonna like me? Are they not? Am I that interesting? Am I not?’ So for me, that was one of the things that caught my attention at first.”

Jones says he “relished” in not having to carry his celebrity status. “I don’t go around shouting what I do anyway, when I’m back home,” he shares. “I wanted to try something that’ll be out of my comfort zone.”

Babel says in his experience, footballers are used to using their status and careers as “leverage.”

“I feel like football has been part of our whole lives from the very, very early beginning. So mostly what you know is football. It’s in your DNA,” he explains. “And now you get stripped away completely and what’s almost left, right? Sure we have, in our own way, some type of personality, but it only goes so far.”

Babel also says he initially couldn’t adapt to being a reality television star.

“It was, in the beginning, very intimidating having all these cameras on my face and I have to showcase how you throw some game on when you date. And everyone can listen and see how you talk,” Babel says. “That for me was in the beginning very difficult.”

Over time, Babel says O’Hara helped him get more comfortable and they both bonded about being the only dads in the group.

On handling public rejection

Initially, the experience wasn’t what the athletes imagined. For the first part of the process, the women were completely in control, deciding which of the men to date.

Babel, O’Hara and Fabián struggled to find connections, as they were passed over for Fassi and Jones.

“It was an absolute killer, an absolute nightmare. I hated every minute of it,” O’Hara says.

Complimenting Babel, Jones and Fassi’s physical appearances, he says of himself, “I’m there with the dad bod. The first (picture) they showed the women, the first one they see, I’ve got the reddest face ever. I’m sunburned. I look like a tourist from the UK that’s been thrown in like an extra … It couldn’t have been the worst start for me.”

Three women selected Jones for dates in the premiere and more showed interest in him and Fassi in the other episodes. After a few rejections, O’Hara says he thought about leaving the show.

“There’s no point (in) me being here because I don’t get to choose anyone,” he remembers thinking at the time. “They’re judging me and all they’re seeing is this red tomato head with no personality because I can’t talk.”

“It’s not easy being judged. It’s hard being judged by women. It was horrible, horrible. Ruthless some of them, as well,” he continues.

It seems none of the men were proud of how they first came across to the women. Fassi, laughing, says, “I didn’t know that my line was gonna be with emojis. I put, like, 10.”

He maintains it was a fun experience, since he isn't used to hearing what people actually think about him.

On dating multiple women at once

Jones and Fassi successfully landed multiple dates throughout the experiment, which brought a different set of challenges.

Both acknowledge it was an “ego boost” to learn so many of the women liked them. But with more options, Jones says, it was easy to lose track of the stories he concocted about his fictional life and occupation. In Episode Three, he had a minor slip up and almost revealed his true identity.

“I was trying to remember everything I told to one girl. Then, I’d be on a date with a different girl, I’d say like a different story. I think I told one of the girls I was a professor at one point,” he recalls. “I definitely found it really challenging. It was just hard because you’re just talking about something you’ve never done before.”

Fassi says he had to devote equal time to different women instead of pursuing one strong connection.

Jones and Fassi also worried about how the women would respond when they learned the truth. After getting eliminated, each woman is visited by one of the stars during her exit interview, and the athlete comes clean about their real identity. The other contestants remain in the dark until about halfway through the season when the men narrow down the group and ask one woman to travel with them to their home countries.

Fassi says his “biggest concern” was if the woman he chose would change how she behaved after he told her the truth.

“When I actually got to know this girl, once she went home (and) saw my place, what I do, what I have, the things that I can afford, I think that’s when things got really, really interesting,” he says.

On their bromance

The athletes repeatedly gush about each other’s accolades and careers in the episodes. They also deliver some much-needed pep talks when one of them feels discouraged about finding love on the show.

But with only 18 women to choose from, some of them developed feelings for the same contestant. Looking back at the experiment, O’Hara says he wished they had a conversation about pursuing the same woman beforehand.

“Footballers, in a way, have a mutual respect for each other. So there wasn’t a conversation about stepping on people’s toes. But I wish we did have that conversation because we were way too friendly,” he says.

He continues, “I wish the conversation we had from the start was, ‘Listen, we have a bit of respect, but it is also a competition.’ And I think if I’d go back … I should have stepped on more toes.”

As an example of their playful banter and friendship, O’Hara jokingly says that Jones “ruined it for everyone” because a majority of the women were focused on him.

Babel agrees that they should’ve been more selfish given the limited amount of time.

“But, it’s a strange thing,” he says. “Some guys take things the wrong way and if it’s not being talked about beforehand then you have, like, a spoiled relationship for no reason. Like what, over a girl?”

Although they were all looking for love, Fassi says it was important for them to put their friendship first the entire time.

“I think that that’s what got us through the show so smoothly, because we actually wanted the other guy to be good. We actually wanted the other guy to be happy. And if that meant that maybe he would go out with a girl that you’d like, (then) OK.”

When Fassi says the group didn’t treat the show as a competition, Jones, who also mentions there wasn’t any jealousy between them, chimes in and shares his perspective.

“We were almost being too nice on occasion,” Jones says. “I’m not gonna ruin it though. But we actually tried to do someone else a favor and then you see…”

Viewers will get to see what he teased play out when the next group of “Love Undercover” episodes arrive on May 16.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com