Taylor Haag nearly walked away from the Love Is Blind season 8 pods long before Daniel Hastings ever proposed.
“I almost went home — I lost my voice for three days straight and I was so frustrated,” Taylor, 32, told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published on Wednesday, February 19. “My voice is all I have here and I’m fighting to get words out. I wasn’t really interacting with the girls in the lounge because I was trying to rest to get [my voice] back as fast as possible, so I felt like I was missing out on those interactions.”
She added, “I had started putting things in my bag. I was like, ‘If I don’t have a voice tomorrow, I am going to go home,’ and it came back.”
The colonoscopy nurse was one of the participants on season 8 of Netflix’s popular blind dating series, which was based in Minnesota this season. By the second and third episodes, Taylor revealed during a date with Daniel, 30, that she had lost her voice.
Love Is Blind’ Star Taylor Haag Opens Up About Season 8 Instagram Drama
Daniel wasn’t deterred by Taylor’s strained vocal cords, revealing that he was still intrigued to get to know her after bonding over their shared love of Christmas. By the end of the 10-day pod experiment, Daniel proposed without seeing Taylor in person.
Taylor and Daniel only met face-to-face in the reveal tunnel when they celebrated their engagement, which was quickly overshadowed by Taylor’s fears that the experience wasn’t actually blind. Taylor claimed via confessional that Daniel attempted to follow her on social media ahead of filming, asserting that he knew exactly what she looked like going into their dates. Daniel, meanwhile, fervently denied the accusations.
LiB’s Nick and Vanessa Lachey Disagree on Taylor and Daniel’s IG Drama
“I started to think of all of the big points that brought us so close together that seemed like fate,” Taylor recalled to EW. “But then it was like, ‘Is this too good to be true?’ Which I did talk about in the pods because it was so harmonious leading up to that cliffhanger. And at that time, I was a single girl — it wasn’t uncommon for single guys to follow me on social media, it was almost like a dating app in a sense too, like meeting new people. So based on a lot of different factors, that’s kind of the conclusion I had come to in my head.”
Love Is Blind hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey, for their parts, took opposing sides on the drama.
“It’s funny because that was one of those moments — we always tend to agree, but then when we do disagree, we agree to disagree. And I was like, ‘I understand what she’s saying.’ And [Nick’s] like, ‘I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,’” Vanessa, 44, exclusively told Us Weekly. “If somebody is following you and does know a lot about you, is that fair?” she pondered. “And it didn’t give you an opportunity to truly get to know them for who they are because that is personal. That is why it’s Instagram and it’s posted. She had this little voice in the back of her head, and I’m really proud of her for speaking up on it.”
Nick, 51, however, didn’t think Taylor’s concerns were “a big deal.”
“I understood why it was a big deal to her,” Vanessa added. “And I think that they handled it beautifully.”
Whether Taylor and Daniel overcame the alleged pre-pod social media activity will be revealed in the Friday, February 21, batch of LiB episodes.
Love Is Blind is currently streaming on Netflix. New episodes drop weekly.
