Nick Lachey is opening up about the flubbed reunion special for season 4 of Love Is Blind. The episode, which was supposed to stream live on Netflix in April, ended up being delayed by 16 hours, leaving fans and viewers upset.
And once the segment did air, there was even more criticism surrounding Nick and his wife and co-host, Vanessa Lachey, and the way they handled the reunion.
Nick and his brother and 98 Degrees bandmate, Drew Lachey, were recently guests on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy, where he opened up about the criticism and production issues surrounding the Netflix event.
“I appreciate what you said after the fact because I think very few people understand like you do what all goes into that and what’s involved,” Nick told host Andy Cohen, who often hosts reunion specials for Bravo shows.
In April, Andy called the concept of a live reunion special a “very bad idea,” noting, “There is a lot of grist to go through before you get to the prime beef. And there is a reason they’re edited down. We could talk about a topic on a reunion taping for 25 minutes, for 45 minutes before really getting to the heart of something.”
Nick acknowledged that the “technology failed” in terms of the special, but added, “But to your point, a reunion, there’s so many things you want to flush out, so many things you want to get to and to try to do that in a timetable that’s finite is not the way to go.”
He said of his and Vanessa’s handling of the show, “You’re cutting people off. In your ear you’re getting, ‘We’ve got to go, move on!’ So you’re trying to let people flush out their stories and get things off their chest and you’re doing it while you’re being rushed.”
Noting that he only had a strict hour in which to get everything in, Nick laughed when Drew claimed he did it all wrong.
“In fact, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Nick replied.
It was actually Nick’s wife, Vanessa, who received the brunt of the criticism for how she handled contestants during the Love Is Blind reunion. Contestant Paul Peden told ET he felt Vanessa had a “personal bias” against him in her questioning regarding his ex, Micah Lussier.
ET also spoke with several season 4 alums about the criticism Vanessa faced for her reunion questions and behavior.
“I know there’s a lot of things going on at the same time, so I think it’d be unfair to put so much of everything on one person,” Brett Brown told ET of the drama. “I wouldn’t say a lot of it is probably warranted, but you know people are going to say what they’re going to say.”
Contestant Kwame Appiah also defended Vanessa when speaking with ET.
“I do think obviously she wants to get answers. She wants to make sure that the people get what they want. It is her job as a host,” Kwame shared. “And so, you know, I can’t critique that too much. I think she did what she thought would be best to create closure for everyone who viewed it, and everyone who was in that experience. And so, yeah, I can’t say that I saw the, you know, a leaning of difficulty on either gender.”
Love Is Blind season 5 premieres Friday, Sept. 22 on Netflix.
RELATED CONTENT: