Nick Viall used his reality TV expertise to weigh in on the conversations surrounding required STD testing — and possible disqualifiers.
During the Tuesday, September 2, episode of the “Viall Files” podcast, Nick, 44, and his cohosts discussed Love Island USA‘s Nic Vansteenberghe addressing chatter that he had a cold sore while filming season 7.
“Just a little behind the scenes on reality TV. Testing positive for type 1 [herpes] in your blood does not disqualify you,” Nick claimed. “One doctor told me that reality TV wouldn’t exist if that was the case.”
Nick was told by a medical professional that type 2 herpes would be the issue. “Type 2 would get you disqualified,” he alleged. “You can’t get on if you test positive for type 2 herpes. But type 1 — like, 80 percent of the population has it in their blood system — they wouldn’t have a show [if they disqualified based on that]. A doctor once told me that which is kind of hilarious.”
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During season 7 of the Peacock dating show, Nic, 24, had a visible red bump on his lip. After getting out of the villa, Nic clarified that an offscreen game of football resulted in him getting injured in the face.
The drama resurfaced when his costar Ace Greene claimed that he saw “a couple” of cold sores while in Fiji with his fellow Islanders.
“I don’t give a damn if we on a show, I’m gonna ask you, ‘Yo, do you have anything, anything you want to let me know?’ or stuff like that,” Ace said on YouTube’s Speedy Morman late last month before making a shady comment. “But you ain’t see no cockroaches around my lips.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, “not every bump or irritation on your lip is a cold sore.” It can be a pimple, which is not contagious. Johns Hopkins Medicine has also published reporting about how 50 to 80 percent of American adults have oral herpes (HSV-1),
Nic has yet to address Ace’s remarks, but both men continue to spend time with the connections they made on the show. While Ace is with Chelley Bissainthe, Nic is seeing Olandria Carthen.
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“[Our relationship is] something that we haven’t labeled yet. We’re going at the comfortable pace that we want to go at. When we look at the grand scheme of things, we’re just taking our time and investing in the real world and enjoying each other’s company,” Nic exclusively told Us Weekly in July. “We’re just chilling in bed together now and we are going to Disneyland later.”
The couple also showed their support for the way their love story inspired an entire fandom.
“We are so obsessed with every single edit. We literally were just in the bed right now looking through all the edits on TikTok. Honestly, some of them kind of bring me to tears,” Olandria, 27, shared at the time. “It’s like, ‘Dang, I was really oblivious to this.’ Seeing it in this format — where we started from the very beginning of the show all the way to the end — it’s such a beautiful story to witness. Which is why I feel like a lot of people resonate with our story —I just hate that we didn’t see it sooner.”
