- "Love is Blind"'s Paul Peden said Vanessa Lachey showed "personal bias" during the reunion episode.
- Lachey pressed him on why he had decided not to marry Micah Lussier hours before their wedding.
After a lengthy delay due to technical difficulties, "Love Is Blind" viewers finally got to tune into the highly anticipated reunion episode on Monday and catch up with this season's contestants, many of whom didn't make it to the altar.
Paul Peden and Micah Lussier were one such couple who chose not to tie the knot after meeting in the Netflix show's pods, although they didn't call it quits for good after calling off their wedding. They gave their romance another go after the cameras stopped rolling, but it quickly ended.
During a heated moment at the reunion, the environmental scientist was quizzed by cohost Vanessa Lachey over a worry he had about Lussier that he shared with audiences in a to-camera interview during the wedding episode. He had said that he couldn't picture her as a mom and that was one of the reasons he chose not to marry her.
Lussier wasn't aware of Peden's remark until she had watched the episode and said at the reunion that the comment was the "worst thing" Peden could have said about her because she envisions having a big family in the future.
Lachey then repeatedly pushed Peden to explain why he had not shared his concerns with his former fiancée and expand on what he had meant by it.
Many viewers criticized Lachey's line of questioning, something that Peden agreed with, telling People that the interview felt like an "interrogation on issues" rather than an open dialogue.
"I thought that I detected a little bit of personal bias there. I'm not sure what it was," Peden said of Lachey's approach.
"And I guess she's within her right to drill on personal bias, but she shouldn't present as being an objective neutral party if that's the case," he continued. "But I think it's fair to continue follow-up questions. But if we're going to go that route, we need to be able to have a full-length conversation."
"It was drilling into these things, and I don't know," he also said. "In all, it's alright. I think that no matter what you say, no matter what the conversation is, your character comes through in what you say."
During the episode, Peden did apologize to Micah, 27, admitting that he had "phrased that really unfairly towards her," and actually meant that he couldn't see either of them as parents.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the reunion, Lachey also asked all the couples about their plans for having kids, something fans have also criticized as an inappropriate move.
—RandomThoughts (@RandomThought66) April 17, 2023
Several hours after the reunion, Peden posted to his Instagram Stories a photo of a bouquet of roses along with a caption that suggested they were an apology gift from Lachey.
"Thanks for acknowledging the accidental misleading @vanessalachey," he wrote over the image.
In a separate story, he reshared a post from a fan watching the reunion that noted that Lachey was "out for blood" when it came to questioning him.
"Honestly she never wanted to understand what I was saying. She just wanted to punish me," he added as he shared it with his 188,000 followers.
Representatives for neither Netflix nor Lachey immediately responded to requests for comment.