Nick Thompson
Appearances
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
If I speak now and I do some of this work now, I can...
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
step away and never have to worry about it again and because it's scary like the ndas are scary i got a cease and desist type letter like it's it's terrifying and you know when i got that letter all i could think about is i was like well what have i got to lose what are they gonna sue me for how would you view love is blind now based on your experience in it
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
But you're naive, and this is why people are like, oh, well, you signed up for it. It's like you kind of go into it blind and think to yourself, well, this isn't going to happen to me.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
It's different in the sense of I don't think of reality TV as real. I think of it as a show. And I... You know, hindsight's always 20-20, but I definitely think I would have probably approached it a little bit differently had I known what I know now. But I just think it's something that I did. It's not who I am.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
And I wish everyone who chooses to participate in this show or any other show, like, I just wish them well. And I hope that they come out of it better than they went into it. I don't watch it.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
People ask that, like, did you watch the latest season? I'm like, no, I did not.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
Oh, my life before Love is Blind was pretty good. I was at the time at a software company. I had bought my own condo here in Chicago. I had a cute dog. I had so many things going for me, but I really was missing someone to share it with.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
The premise of Love is Blind is actually very true to the title of the show. There's 15 men and 15 women, and you speed date with one another in these things called the pods, where you can talk to one another, but you cannot see each other.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
And then over the course of a couple of weeks, you narrow that down, and if you agree to get engaged, then you get to see them the next day for the first time, making a decision on the last day if you want to get married at the altar.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
I was a believer in the concept. You know, there were some success stories that came out of it, and I was like, maybe this could work for me. Like, I felt, you know, this is a good way to get to know someone and not have the distractions of work and endless opportunities on dating apps. There's 15 people, and if one of them works out, great.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
And I kind of got myself in the mindset of, if it's day one and I'm not connecting with anyone, I'm fine going home.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
So the first day you get there, you give up your phone, you give up your suitcase. They go through your suitcase, all that stuff. I had a smartwatch. They took my smartwatch.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
Oh, yeah, IDs, passports, all of it. So you really don't have access to any of that.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
If you don't drink, they interrogate you and ask you why you're not drinking.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
Then when you get there to that set, I do remember being like, wow, this is Hollywood. It's a very big set, sound studio. There's basically two sides. On those two sides, there's a male side and a female side. There's some snacks in there most of the time, alcohol, of course. And then you sit there, and that's when you have your conversations or your dates, as we call them.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
All of that is being filmed. You're being filmed for 16, 18, I would say sometimes 20 hours a day.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
I remember being in the hotel rooms and I was like, this is weird because one, I drink a ton of water and I had like two bottles of water that was parched a lot. I also noticed somewhere around probably day three that I was like really hungry most of the time and I didn't feel like I was getting adequate food or water despite asking. And then you also don't get a hotel room key.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
And if you do have to leave your room without permission, you get locked out. I get that they want all interactions to happen on camera, but I feel like I was going a little crazy. I think we all did. Then I also noticed by the time I went to put my suit on, which was two weeks in, I put on my suit, which I had tailored the week before going, and it was really loose.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
And then when I finally got home, I realized I'd lost like 15 pounds over the course of a couple weeks.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
It's kind of crazy when you look back on it and be like, I married someone after seven weeks in a highly controlled environment for most of the time.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
I had a pretty good resume. I had a lot of experience. And... I started having job interviews and the topic of discussion became the show. It was no longer about my experience. It always came down to you were on the show and there was always some sort of reason as to why that wasn't going to work for them.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
This is the darkest time of my entire life. The divorce obviously was hard. And I think people think because they watched it on TV and then they see the headlines or whatever, they think it's not real. It was very real. I don't want to speak for her, but I believe we fell in love. And then I, at the same, within a few weeks, I had been let go from my job.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
My name is Nick Thompson. I'm 39 years old, and I was a cast member on Love is Blind season two.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
And that was when I kind of just hit rock bottom.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
And that's where I kind of started having these thoughts that, you know, they have a lot of control, a lot of autonomy. And I was like, wow, this actually doesn't really make sense the way that this is framed.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
Because then the production companies would have to follow basic labor laws, which is pay minimum wages over time, and the fact that in the contract it says you cannot form a union or be a part of a union. And so if we were ever going to have those rights and that collective bargaining, this was step one to do that.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
The lack of autonomy and the length of the contracts and the NDAs, there was a possibility that the NLRB could deem that those are illegal and that we should be classified as employees.
The Journal.
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Back. Not All the Drama Is On-Screen.
Yeah, it's like around 30 pages. There were parts in there that kind of like struck me a little bit as odd. You don't really have any rights to talk about what your experience was. You're subject to being sued through arbitration. You can be defamed and misrepresented, and you basically have no recourse. And those are the parts that I thought, huh, that's weird.