Love Is Blind season 9 star Annie Lancaster has addressed her now-controversial conversation about accepting her future children being a part of the LGBTQ+ community.
“I think, in the pods, they’re asking us really hard questions because they want us to find a partner,” Annie, 31, said on the Tuesday, October 14, episode of the “Viall Files” podcast. “By Nick [Amato] asking me what I would do if my child came out to me as LGBTQ, I paused because I have a lot of people, like, my family … and friends [who] are also queer in the community.”
While Annie stressed that she’d “love [her] kids” regardless, fans were outraged about why she hesitated in saying so.
“It was that pause that people are really upset about,” she said on Tuesday. “The answer is, ‘I would love my kids no matter what. I would support them in anything that they do.’ This group of people is already fighting adversity. They’re already, kind of, struggling [and] they’re having to face these people [who] don’t accept them. I would never want to be one of those people.”
Love Is Blind star Nick Amato is clarifying his controversial comments regarding LGBTQ+ children. Nick claimed in a Friday, October 3, Instagram video that his remarks during episode four were edited — something that has “deeply impacted” him since season 9 of the hit series aired on Wednesday, October 1. “The studio reached out and […]
Annie continued, “Everyone deserves love, and especially my children. I think my pause and my answer was just thinking about my friends and my family that have had to face these really difficult seasons of their lives of coming out and maybe not being accepted. I would never do that, and I would always love my children, my friends, my family and support anyone in the queer community.”
While speaking with Nick, 28, in the pods, he subsequently asked Annie whether coming out as queer was “a fad.” Annie seemingly agreed with her eventual fiancé.
“I don’t think being gay is a fad, period,” she stressed on Tuesday. “However, that part of that conversation was actually clipped from another part that we were talking about. We were talking about something very different ‘cause [Nick] doesn’t specifically say, ‘Do you think being gay is a fad?’ That was just clipped very conveniently after that conversation.”
According to Annie, she and Nick were actually speaking about the trend of “over-sexualization” in kids’ TV shows.
Annie and Nick. Courtesy of Netflix
“We were bonding over how we weren’t allowed to watch SpongeBob [SquarePants] when we were little,” the hairstylist explained. “We were talking about [whether] we think putting sex out into the world is a fad, like, overusing sex, selling sex and over-sexualization in kids’ shows.”
Despite the truth of Annie and Nick’s conversation, fans have believed alternative perspectives.
“I had people leaving one-star reviews for my salon, calling me a homophobe,” Annie alleged on Tuesday’s episode. “I just want to be so clear, like, I am not a homophobe at all. I completely support the queer community [and] those are some of my best friends.”
Nick has also addressed the conversation, revealing in a social media post earlier this month that his comments were similarly taken out of context.
“Being gay is perfectly normal,” Nick said in his October 3 video. “There’s so much hate in this world that if I can’t use this platform to help introduce other people that used to think like I did to some of these new ideas. I’m so grateful for some of my gay friends for reaching out and being like, ‘Nick, we know that’s not you but this is what you have to understand.’ If I can’t use that platform for good, then it’s a platform wasted. I really appreciate you guys for giving me all the hell that you did and letting me know that that’s not right.”
Nick proposed to Annie sight unseen after they each ended their other pod connections. The pair, however, broke up days before their scheduled wedding day.
Love Is Blind is currently streaming on Netflix. New episodes drop weekly.