Love Is Blind star Nick Dorka continues to insist that he never called ex-fiancée Hannah Jiles names over her physical appearance.
“I never called her a grenade. I’d never call someone a grenade,” Nick, 29, said in the Thursday, November 7, episode of the “Off the Vine” podcast. “I did tell Ramses [Prashad] and Garrett [Josemans] off-camera in guy talk [that] I was a little underwhelmed by how she looked.”
Nick further claimed that the conversation — which he would “never” have on camera — took place ahead of their joint trip to Mexico.
“I would never do that and that’s not why I was there,” he asserted to podcast host Kaitlyn Bristowe. “It’s Love Is Blind. We had a deep connection in the pods [and I was looking to see if] that can continue. … We had such a crazy connection. I’m like, ‘Look, dating hasn’t worked in the past. This could really work.’”
According to Nick, his “guy talk” was never meant to be repeated to anyone — especially not Hannah, 27.
Hannah alleged during the October 30 reunion that Nick called her a “grenade,” a rumor that she heard from cast member Marissa George. (Marissa, 32, was engaged to Ramses, 35, during the Netflix experiment before he called off their wedding days before the scheduled ceremony.)
“[Marissa] was the one who told me about the grenade comment and the rating thing,” Hannah exclusively told Us Weekly earlier this month. “She had known in Mexico, but kept it from me for a while because she didn’t wanna hurt my feelings, which I totally understand. … At first, [I thought], ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ She was like, ‘I don’t wanna hurt your feelings,’ which is valid.”
She added, “I feel like the grenade thing would be only something that Nick would say. I knew he wasn’t that sexually attracted to me or wasn’t into me the whole entire time, whether he said it or not. He would make comments off camera where I kind of knew [that] we weren’t sexually compatible — like, it just wasn’t working.”
Hannah also claimed during the reunion special that she read Nick’s private journal, in which he manifested becoming the most famous Love Is Blind alum of all time.
“I do own it; I say on the reunion that I did write it,” Nick said on Thursday. “If you did a lie detector test with everyone on there and they didn’t want to get famous off of it, cool, like, you’re lying. Everyone does.”
Fame to Nick, he stressed, wasn’t just about joining the show for “clout” or to gain more social media followers.
“I wanted to find someone on that journey,” Nick said. “I want people to like us as a couple and thrive that way. … I wrote that four months before I even knew I was on the show, so I was taking it super light. I was messing around.”
Nick, however, blasted Hannah over the “invasion of privacy” of snooping through his belongings.
“Why are you going through my damn notebook?” the real estate agent quipped to host Bristowe, 39. “That’s not cool. I don’t want a partner [who’s] going to pick up my phone, type in my password and go through it. That’s not who I am. If that is who you are and your friends [are], then that’s OK.”
Nick was also insistent that he was “not trying to throw shade” at Hannah but explained that they spoke about the context of his notebook remarks before she brought it up at the reunion.
“Maybe she got a bad edit or she needed to save face and she wanted to get at me even more,” Nick theorized. “There was no point in bringing it up because that was before I met [her.]”
Hannah ultimately called off the pair’s engagement over Nick’s alleged lack of maturity and their different living styles.
Love Is Blind is currently streaming on Netflix.
