Former Love Is Blind contestant Renee Poche has accused Netflix of breaking California labor and civil codes throughout manufacturing of the truth relationship present.
Renee, 33, filed a lawsuit in opposition to the streaming platform and the manufacturing firm Delirium, claiming that she felt like a “prisoner” throughout her “traumatic” stint on Love Is Blind.
Renee appeared on season 5 of Love Is Blind, which was set in Texas and aired in 2023. Throughout her time on the present, she sparked a romance with Carter Wall, and so they obtained engaged sight unseen. In her lawsuit, Renee claimed that Netflix and Delirium didn’t correctly display Carter, 30, in the course of the casting course of.
“Little did Poche know that she can be matched with a strolling pink flag: a person named Carter Wall, who was unemployed with a destructive stability in his checking account, homeless, violent, estranged from his household and actively hooked on medication and alcohol,” she claimed in court docket paperwork obtained by Us Weekly. “Wall’s erratic and alarming conduct and emotional instability turned obviously apparent to Poche and the manufacturing workers. Poche turned totally terrified to be round him and made her misgivings clear to manufacturing.”
Renee additional alleged that manufacturing didn’t reprimand Carter regardless of listening to her complaints. She claimed that she was “compelled to spend lengthy stretches of time alone with him” and that Delirium would “topic her” to authorized motion if she stopped filming the present or “refused to maneuver ahead” with their engagement.
“On this local weather of worry and unease, Poche started to spiral bodily, mentally and emotionally,” the paperwork state, noting Renee was “totally terrified” of filming with Carter.
Whereas going by way of the pod experiment, Renee additionally claimed that manufacturing “locked [her] in her lodge room” and she or he couldn’t depart and not using a “solid wrangler.”
“She was expressly forbidden from interacting not solely with different members but in addition with random lodge friends and workers. In some methods, and it is a sentiment shared by many members, Poche felt like a prisoner,” the submitting added.
Renee broke up with Carter after Love Is Blind filming wrapped, and Netflix subsequently advised her that their relationship wouldn’t be featured in season 5.
“Though Poche was advised that it was as a result of manufacturing didn’t need her to should relive her expertise with Wall, that rationalization appears clearly false given the whole lack of concern for her well-being and security all through,” she claimed. “Poche is knowledgeable and believes, and primarily based thereon alleges, that Wall threatened to commit suicide if footage of him was aired.”
Carter has not publicly addressed any of the complaints made by Renee, who additionally claimed that Delirium “initiated arbitration” in opposition to her in November 2023 for allegedly violating a nondisclosure settlement she signed throughout casting.
Renee, who has since married a person she beforehand met on a relationship app, is searching for “precise, compensatory, consequential and/or exemplary damages” and a jury trial.
Us has reached out to Netflix and Delirium for remark.