‘Love Is Blind’: Shayne Jansen Supports Irina Solomonova Amid ‘Mean Girl’ Controversy
Love Is Blind fans dubbed season 4 star Irina Solomonova a “mean girl” and a “villain” for her behavior on the reality TV show. Season 2 star Shayne Jansen spoke out in her defense after fans of the Netflix series left cruel comments on Irina’s social media. Here’s what Shayne said about his fellow Love Is Blind alum.
[Spoiler alert: Love Is Blind season 4 spoilers ahead.]
‘Love Is Blind’ fans labeled season 4 star Irina Solomonova a ‘mean girl’
Even though she has seemingly already departed from the show, Irina made waves with her Love Is Blind co-stars and viewers. She has been labeled a “mean girl” and a “villain” for her treatment of others on the show.
Irina matched with Zack Goytowski, assuring him from behind the wall that she didn’t care about his looks. In the pods, Irina and Micah Lussier laughed at another contestant as she cried over her relationship.
When she came face to face with Zack, Irina appeared less than enthused about her partner, describing him as “something out of a cartoon.” She continuously insulted and pushed him away while pursuing her friend Micah’s match, Paul Peden.
“Irina Solomonova and Micah Lussier are the biggest villains of reality television,” one fan tweeted. “Marvel and DC comics’ darkest writers combines [sic] couldn’t create a duo as sinister as these 2 mean girls…”
“The whole thing about Irina is she wanted to win,” tweeted another fan. “She wasn’t looking for love. She wanted to win because of her own insecurities. She came in a mean girl and manipulated, lied, and belittled so she can say she was the one that won.”
‘Love Is Blind’ season 2 star Shayne Jensen defended Irina Solomonova
A former Love Is Blind contestant, season 2 star Shayne Jansen, recently came to Irina’s defense.
On March 20, Irina shared an Instagram post showing photos of herself sipping wine and surrounded by plants. “Easily a big smile when you’re around,” the 26-year-old captioned the images.
Although the comments section was flooded with fans admonishing Irina for her behavior on the show, Shayne showed support for his fellow Netflix star.
“I know I’ll get a ton of backlash for this. But these comments are honestly absolutely disgusting,” he wrote. “Yes what she did was horrible completely. Completely horrible I don’t defend it. But seeing most of these comments the hate some of you have is sad.”
He went on to share his experience from being on Love Is Blind. “My first four eps of my season I couldn’t get out of bed and was horribly depressed from the hate and comments,” Shayne said. “Just because someone f***ed up it’s ok to completely ruin their life? I’ve done a lot growing and trust me still have plenty. Poke fun sure with some of the scenes but the words I see being used are sad.”
The Perfect Match star concluded, “I promise you there is a better way. No one deserves this idc what you did. She will never grow this way. Take that as you will and I’ll take the heat. Love you all.”
The Netflix star has since posted an apology for her ‘mean girl’ behavior
On April 2, Irina shared another Instagram post apologizing for her behavior on Love Is Blind. It was a video of herself speaking into the camera, which she captioned, “From my heart.”
She started by apologizing that the video was “a little delayed” because she had been taking “some time to process everything.”
“The first thing I wanna say is that I have privately apologized to the people that I have hurt and mistreated,” Irina said. “And second of all, I wanted to say that 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 specified that Zack, Bliss, Amber, Jackie, and Micah did not deserve how she treated them. “I’m genuinely so, so sorry. Truly 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 exact opposite of that person.”
Irina said watching the show was like having a mirror held up to show her a different perspective. “I just want to say that I’m still journeying this, if journeying is a word, I’m still journeying this and everything that happened, and figuring out the person I want to be and that I want to move forward to be,” she said. “But I know none of those things were OK. Even Zack, he was so vulnerable with me, and I so mistreated him and shut him out.”
She concluded by saying she hoped to one day share her experience and what was going on with her emotionally.
