“Payback Is A Bitch”: Renee Poche & Lawyers On Sweeping ‘Love Is Blind’ Suit & The Feds’ Big Reality TV Workers Rights Move

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: “It’s like what Mark says, this is what you would call ‘the f*ck around and find out” stage,’ former Love is Blind contestant Renee Poche tells Deadline today of a complaint by the National Labor Relations Board that hits at the heart of Reality TV. “I mean, I was supposed to do a vet show, and now maybe I can.” In a sweeping December 11 document, the NLRB’s Minnesota bureau added fuel to Poche’s long running civil case against LIB producers Kinetic Content and Delirium TV by slamming the companies behind the Netflix streamed steamy series.

This comes as the producers’ $4 million claims against Poche for publicly speaking out about what really went down during her never aired stint on LIB continues behind the closed doors of arbitration.

Specifically, the feds say the LIB producers, like most Reality TV producers, “intentionally misclassified its Love is Blind cast members, including Charging Party Thompson and Charging Party Poche, as non-employee ‘participants’ thereby inhibiting them from engaging in Section 7 activity and depriving them of the protections of the Act.” To that, and lambasting producers for restrictive NDAs and contracts that prevent Reality TV participants like Poche and her ex-Nick Thompson from essentially taking on any other type of work for ages, the soon-to-be Trump 2.0 dominated NLRB have set an April 22, 2025 hearing on the issues raised in their complaint.

Dialing in from the windy Houston rooftop of an animal shelter Poche and her LA-based main lawyers Bryan Freedman and Mark Geragos spoke down with Deadline after the NLRB complaint became public to delve into its implications for the LIB Season 5 participant directly, and the increasingly besieged unscripted industry overall.