Nick Lachey has responded to former Love Is Blind star Lauren Speed-Hamilton after she called out a lack of diversity on the new season.
The 48-year-old, who hosts Love Is Blind alongside his wife Vanessa Lachey, addressed Speed-Hamilton’s remark during an interview with Entertainment Tonight on Wednesday. His comments come after Speed-Hamilton went to Twitter to criticise the program for not featuring enough Black women in the third season.
During his conversation with the publication, Lachey said that Speed-Lauren’s tweet was a “fair observation” and that he “understands where she’s coming from with it”. However, he also acknowledged that there isn’t necessarily a way to control who contestants form a connection with.
“People gravitate to who they gravitate to,” he said. “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.”
The 98 Degrees singer went on to praise Love Is Blind’s casting team for bringing in contestants who are people of colour.
“I think that all you can do in terms of being in the show and being in the casting department is casting fairly and with great diversity,” he said. “I think that they’ve done a good job of trying to do that.”
Lachey also emphasised that once the experiment begins, it’s up to the contestants to decide who they want to be with, adding: “How it plays out, I can’t really answer to that part of it other than I know it’s not dictated or manipulated... who moves forward. It’s really, truly the connections they make blindly in the pods.”
Last week, Speed-Hamilton called the program out for not featuring Black women in Love Is Blind’s third season three. “I don’t like how LIB be cutting all the black women. How come they are always in the trailer but not the show,” she wrote.
The season one contestant also claimed that the program is centred on certain couples primarily for entertainment purposes. “I know it’s slim pickings but about 85 per cent of them couples be forced (just moving forward for entertainment purposes) anyway,” she continued. “Y’all could at least force some more sisters to move forward throughout the show.”
When a fan asked the reality star how she thought producers decided which engaged couples are featured on the program, she responded: “It’s couples that get engaged that aren’t even shown sometimes. I think they only show what they deem most entertaining.”
Elsewhere in his interview with ET, Lachey expressed that Love Is Blind has been a success for some couples, despite how the experiment is jarringly different from the usual “dating world”.
“We’ve seen people that have gotten together and discovered something unique about someone and fallen in love with someone on this show that they probably never in the normal, superficial dating world would’ve connected with,” Lachey said. “Is it enough? No. Physical definitely plays a part at some point, and that connection has to be made as well.”
He also prefaced how Speed-Hamilton’s relationship shows the experiment works, as she found love and married Cameron Hamilton. Contestants Amber Pike and Matt Barnett also tied the knot in season one.
“Lauren is a perfect example,” he added. “Lauren had never dated outside of her race in her life and met Cameron on the show, made a connection, and are happily married to this day. It kind of lays the groundwork for everything else.”
