Love Is Blind star Paul Peden has defended fiancé Micah Lussier and his co-star, Irina Solomonova, following the criticism that the two women have received from fans.
Warning: spoilers for Love Is Blind season four below
Throughout the fourth season of the Netflix show, both Lussier and Solomonova received backlash from viewers who claimed that they acted like “mean girls” on the show. The pair have since publicly apologised for their behaviour on their social media accounts.
Now, Peden has also come to their defence during a recent interview withE! News. He explained that he’s been unhappy about the backlash and that it doesn’t seem right for Lussier and Solomonova to be treated this way.
“I have hated to see that,” he said. “I know that they made mistakes, but they do not deserve that intensity of criticism. It’s just not fair. It’s not right.”
Peden specified what the harsh backlash has been before criticising viewers who have continued to penalise Solmonava and Lussier for their “mistakes” on the show.
“When you’re receiving thousands of death threats? When someone’s wishing you’re dead,” he said. “They know that they made mistakes. They’ve acknowledged them. I think that’s all you can ask for from somebody.”
He added: “You don’t want to continually punish somebody beyond what is necessary to make them recognize that they made a mistake. Anything beyond that is just malicious.”
Penden’s comments come weeks after Solomonova took to Instagram to apologise to her ex-fiancé, Zack Goytowski, and to viewers for “the way that [she] was mistreating people on the show”.
“The first thing I want to say is that I have privately apologised to the people that I have hurt and mistreated,” she said in the Instagram video. “Second of all, I wanted to say I’m so, so sorry for the people that watched the show that felt frustrated, angry, and hurt by the way that I was mistreating people on the show. It was very immature and naive of me in a lot of those situations.”
She then apologised to her fellow Love Is Blind contestants, including Goytowski and Bliss Poureetezadi, who formed a connection in the pods and got engaged later in the season.
“Even Zack,” Solomonova added. “He was so vulnerable with me and I mistreated him and shut him out. I’m genuinely so, so sorry. I want to add value to people and I want to make people feel seen and who I was on the show was the complete, opposite of that person.”
Lussier also took to her Instagram story last month to issue a public apology. She said that she’s “apologised privately to the people that were hurt on the show by [her] hands”.
“An emotional immaturity was shown and I will grow from it,” she wrote. “To the viewers I’ve hurt, I’m sorry I’ve triggered so many of you with my behaviour. See that person on the screen would make me feel the same anger.”
She also noted that she turned her Instagram comments off at the time to protect her mental health.
“It has always been something I’ve struggled with, and I know I can not better myself if I’m more unwell mentally,” Lussier concluded. “I hope you understand that I am taking accountability privately.”
In episode two, the two reality stars first sparked criticism from viewers when they eavesdropped on fellow cast member Amber Wilder as she was dating Peden in the pods before he ultimately got engaged to Lussier. Solomonova also found herself in a love triangle in the pods, as Goytowski formed a connection with Poureetezadi.
While he chose Solomonova and went to Mexico with her, their relationship ultimately didn’t work out. Once he returned to Seattle, he reached out to Poureetezadi and went on to date her before the pair got engaged.
Episode 12 of Love Is Blind season four will premiere on 14 April, followed by the live reunion on 16 April.
