‘I didn’t want to be around anymore’ says Love Is Blind’s Sam as he reveals fallout after being targeted by trolls
LOVE Is Blind UK’s Sam Klein broke down in tears as he admitted vicious attacks by online trolls left him feeling like he ‘didn’t want to be around anymore’.
The 31-year-old design manager was branded a “villain” and a “walking red flag” by viewers of the Netflix dating show, with fans taking exception to comments he made about his would-be fiancé, Nicole Stevens.
Sam has admitted he was taken off-guard by the overwhelming hate against him online, with relentless messages from trolls leaving him in an increasingly bad mindset.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, Sam tells us: “The first few days…yeah, the first few days I questioned everything, and I fell into a very dark place, I have to be honest.
“I tried to be really brave and tell everyone I’m absolutely fine, but I spent a few days on my own in my flat, and just sort of locked myself in my room.
“I tried to just tell everyone ‘I’m fine. It’s going to be fine’, but then it got to Friday, and someone from production welfare called me, and I just broke down on the phone.
“I was like ‘I can’t do this anymore. I have to be honest, I’m struggling’.”
“I think in hindsight, I wish I did it on day one and I didn’t wait three days to do it,” he says of speaking out.
“But it’s tough because if I’d actually committed a crime, or hurt someone, I’d get it. I just felt a bit hard done by.”
In the first batch of episodes, which dropped on August 7, Sam was seen “speed-dating” alongside the other participants, forming a connection with Nicole, as well as another girl, Jasmine.
When Jasmine ended things to pursue a relationship with now-husband Bobby, Sam was seen attempting to shrug off his rejection with the boys, uttering “beggars can’t be choosers” before doubling down on his romancing of Nicole.
Sam admits he regrets the comment, telling us his “emotions got the better of him” in the moment. He describes dating on the show as “addictive”, with sometimes hours between dates, and things being heightened knowing some of the men around him were interested in the same woman.
“It just was the wrong comment to make,” he says. “It came from a place of love and a lot of emotion. I wish I just went back and sat on my own and didn’t say anything. I wish, in hindsight, I just sat on my own and reflected.
“But you get caught up with it, with the lads in the lounge, and sometimes you do try and have, I guess, a bit of an ego. I think I just tried to put a front on, really.”
“You don’t want to be seen as weak. You’re in a lounge with 14 strong, amazing men, and you don’t want to go in and do that [cry],” he adds. “But in my interviews, you see me cry, and you see my emotion.”
Sam declares himself a “hopeless romantic addicted to romcoms”, who signed up to the show after falling out of luck with dating and focusing on his career.
Unluckily for him, he seemed to find himself in a romcom during the pods, and tangled in a love triangle with Nicole and another of her suitors, Benaiah Grunewald Brydie.
“Some of the stuff I was getting was beyond anything that I thought a TV show, especially a love show, could ever warrant. “
Sam
While Nicole first accepted his proposal, their first meeting was noted as “one of the most awkward in the show’s history”, with Sam telling her she had ‘boring brown eyes’ before quickly correcting himself and saying they were beautiful, and putting her engagement ring on the wrong finger.
The brown eyes comment is another thing he says he regrets.
He tells us: “That brown eye joke, I don’t know why I said it! I was so nervous, stupid, and that’s the one that I was like, ‘Why did I say that?!’
“I don’t even remember saying it. It was so awkward between us two. She didn’t say anything so we were sitting there, and it’s a silent room with 500 people watching you, I’m shaking because I’m a nervous wreck and I’m just like ‘your eyes are…’
“It didn’t come from a place like ‘I’m gonna sit here and try and say something to upset her’. I totally wasn’t trying to do that. And when I said, ‘what do you think about me?’ That was my insecurities, because I always worry about what people think about me.”
Sam also explained his repeated insistence to ‘trust him’ was to give her reassurance after a previous discussion.
“I think Nicole said to me something in the pods, like, ‘How can I trust you?’ Then I took the word and said, ‘You can trust me, because…’ so the word was kind of fed to me.
“Then you only see me say it, and then it [spiralled]. That’s the power of TV, I guess!”
Sam and Nicole later called off the engagement off-screen, with Nicole reconnecting with Benaiah.
Sam said of the reaction to the first episodes: “On the Wednesday morning when the show dropped, I saw my inbox and some of the stuff that people were saying to me…
“I knew the situation was messy, but I thought it was going to be more like ‘Team Sam versus Team Benaiah’, I didn’t think it would be ‘let’s try and message Sam to basically bring him down to a level where he probably might not want to be around anymore’.
“That was kind of the level of abuse I was getting online.”
He also admits that comments about his nose job were particularly hard to stomach, having faced years of bullying about it while growing up at an all-boys school.
During his chat with us, Sam breaks down in tears as he admits the hardest thing was seeing his family – particularly his mum and sister – witness and read the comments, telling us simply, “It sucked. It was really, really hard.”
“You know, a year ago, I wanted to go on to do something to make my family proud, and I had dreams of having that kind of power couple thing, and standing at the altar with my mum,” he adds. “My mum was like, ‘Who am I inviting to the wedding?!’”
Someone from production welfare called me, and I just broke down on the phone.
“I was like ‘I can’t do this anymore. I have to be honest, I’m struggling’.”
Sam
But he credits Netflix for being “really supportive” as well as his loved ones, co-workers, and friends from the pods – naming Catherine, who had her own dramatic love story play out with Freddie, as well as lesser-seen Charlie and Richie, for standing by him.
While things didn’t work out with Sam, Nicole and Benaiah later went on to get married by the end of the series.
Sam said he was really happy for the pair, simply stating “everything happens for a reason”.
“I’m kind of proud of myself for pulling through those two weeks,” Sam says. “But I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
“Some of the stuff I was getting was beyond anything that I thought a TV show, especially a love show, could ever warrant. “
On the hatred, Sam said: “I think a lot of it might be a reflection on the way the world is right now, and there’s a lot of unhappiness and unrest, and I think I was an easy target for people sitting at home.
“It’s easy to sit at home and watch someone on your screen and go, ‘let’s target him’.
“I think that’s okay. If I’ve made people get things off their chest, in a way, I can be the punching bag as well. That’s kind of how I see it.”
“Since the show, I’ve opened up, built a great support network, and started to connect more with nature, lots of long walks, and realised what life was actually about,” he explains.
“I have an amazing family and friends and understanding what the planet is, not what social media is, and this is just a phone. It’s all in here [the phone]. It’s not here [real life].”
“I’ve played up to it a bit now on social media,” he said of his villain status. “I’ve leaned into it a little bit with some comedy, let’s have some fun, because life is too short.”
“Everyone in the streets has been amazing to me. Like, ask the photos coming up to me saying, ‘We know you’re a good guy’, and it’s kind of made me believe that,” he added.
“Some people said, ‘You made me laugh, you made me smile’.
“That brings me happiness, if I made a couple people smile and laugh.”
Love Is Blind UK is available now on Netflix.
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123.