Nick Lachey and Lauren Speed. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/Shutterstock; Courtesy of Lauren Speed-Hamilton/Instagram
Sharing his thoughts. Nick Lachey weighed in after Lauren Speed claimed that Love Is Blind producers are “cutting” Black women from story lines.
The 98 Degrees singer, 48, said he thought Speed’s remarks were “a fair observation” while speaking to Entertainment Tonight on Wednesday, November 2, adding that he can “understand where she’s coming from with it.”
The Love Is Blind cohost went on to add that he’s “not sure what exactly you can do about that except continue to cast with diversity, which they’ve done.”
Last month, the Leap of Faith author, 34, slammed the show in a series of tweets posted before a new batch of season 3 episodes hit Netflix.
“I don’t like how LIB be cutting all the Black women. How come they are always in the trailer but not the show… 👀,” the “We Have the Receipts” podcast host wrote in October. “I know it’s slim pickings but about 85% of them couples be forced (just moving forward for entertainment purposes) anyway. Y’all could at least force some more sisters to move forward throughout the show.”
The Detroit native competed on season 1 of the dating show, which aired in 2020 but was filmed in 2018. She met her husband, Cameron Hamilton, on the series, and they tied the knot during the season finale.
In another tweet, Speed told a fan that there are additional contestants viewers don’t see in the final edit. “It’s couples that get engaged that aren’t even shown sometimes. I think they only show what they deem most entertaining,” she claimed, adding that producers “send em home and stop filming them.”
Lachey, for his part, said that who moves forward is “not dictated or manipulated” by anyone but those competing. “People gravitate to who they gravitate to,” he told ET. “That’s not something that producers or anyone else can dictate or strip or have dictated or stripped. People make connections in the pods for whatever reason, and those connections are then followed through to the rest of the season. … It’s really, truly the connections they make blindly in the pods.”
Ahead of the show’s season 2 premiere earlier this year, the boy bander told Us Weekly that he would do Love Is Blind himself if he wasn’t already married to his cohost, Vanessa Lachey.
“I would. I mean, it’s fascinating,” the Masked Singer winner said in February. “Especially having seen the success of season 1 and seeing two loving couples still married to this day? If I watched that and I was looking for love, why wouldn’t you wanna be a part of that? You know, it’s proven to work!”
Love Is Blind season 3 is currently streaming on Netflix.
