The reality stars discussed their co-star's claims that he's nearing homelessness.
Several of Nick Thompson's Love Is Blind co-stars don't agree with the former reality star's take on his current job situation. After Nick shared that he was let go from his job as a VP of marketing last November and that he's months away from homelessness, his season 2 co-stars, Natalie Lee and Deepti Vempati, discussed his predicament on their Out of the Pods podcast.
Nick partially blamed his time on the hit Netflix dating show for ruining his career prospects and for being partially responsible for being let go in the first place.
"It's tough because Deepti and I are in a very different position than him… we have definitely monetized off our time on Love Is Blind. It sucks to read that he is in a really hard position," Natalie says of Nick, who tied the knot with Danielle Ruhl on the show only for the former couple to file for divorce in August 2022. "It's tough to say because we both know Nick personally, but can I be honest, though, I don't think that he can blame the show."
"I agree," Deepti replies.
"You and I both had corporate jobs and yes, the show did impact our jobs, but I don't think it's impacted our ability to get hired. It didn't impact our reputation that much," Natalie shares.
Noting that she felt she had a "sloppy" edit during the After the Altar special, Natalie adds, "I don't think the show made me unhirable by any means."
Both women reveal that they have since quit their corporate roles after monetizing off their time on the show.
"Yeah, I am very empathetic to his situation, but I think that there's more factors than Netflix being the reason why he's not able to find a position," Deepti notes.
Natalie also makes the disclaimer, "I don't want to discredit what he's going through," adding, "We are not sponsored by Netflix or Kinetic Content, which is the production company of Love Is Blind. If anything, we have our own qualms with Kinetic Content."
Deepti shares that prior to her time on Love Is Blind, she worked at Allstate as a data analyst, and Natalie worked as a change management consultant for the company EY.
Both reality stars discussed continuing to work throughout filming the show.
"The fact that I had to work after my wedding day was wild to me. My eyes were still puffy and my colleagues were like, 'You don't have to go on video today. Just shut it off,'" Natalie says.
Natalie was engaged to her fiancé, Shayne Jansen, and the former pair made it to the altar, only for Natalie to say no due to an off-camera fight.
The exes rekindled and ended their romance multiple times after the show wrapped.
As for Nick, he spoke with ET earlier this month, following his claims that he's close to homelessness.
"I've done everything right. I focused on my career, I saved... [but now] my unemployment’s gone, I had to cash out my 401K so I can just keep paying my mortgage," he told ET. "I'm at the point where I've applied to over 400 jobs and I've got about two months left of paying my mortgage in my bank account."
According to Nick, he feels his role on the show hasn't just impacted his ability to get a new job, but may have played a role in him getting terminated in the first place.
"There were a number of layoffs, but it was a week after my name was not politely mentioned in the media, so I think that might have been a contributing factor when decisions were being made," Nick said. "That's speculation, of course, but after the show came out... I definitely felt like I wasn't taken as seriously anymore... people would treat me a little bit differently and not take my ideas or my work as seriously."
And Nick says his Love Is Blind fame also "changes the whole dynamic" when he's interviewing for jobs.
"It's not about my skills necessarily anymore. It's not necessarily about what I've accomplished in the past, or what I'm capable of doing," he said, adding that even in situations when the interview goes well, "You you get to the end and it's like they don't want what's perceived as like a circus or something."
"The feedback [I've gotten] was that they didn't want my name, necessarily, associated with their company, because they were still in a sort of a start-up growth phase, and they just didn't want the distraction," Nick said. "So those are the types of things that happen."
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