‘Love Is Blind’ star Abhishek ‘Shake’ Chatterjee didn’t hesitate to admit that he liked Vanessa Lachey during the season 2 reunion.
But according to his ex-fiancee Deepti Vempati, it wasn’t the first time he tried to flirt with the show’s co-host, who is married to Nick Lachey.
“Can I tell you he flirted with her at the couples show,” Deepty said on the We’ve Got Receipts podcast with season one star Lauren Speed. “It’s so disrespectful.”
Deepti also stated that Shayk “made a lot of other girls cry” during filming.
“They don’t show it, but I really had to talk to him about it,” she said. “And that was sort of a rocky step in our progress in pods.”
Fans got a glimpse of Shake’s behavior towards Vanessa in the reunion footage. In an attempt to defend how he talked about Deepti behind her back, he told Vanessa that she was the only person in the room he found attractive, all in front of her husband.
“We are animals,” the veterinarian objected, to which Nick answered with applause: “No, you treat animals. We are people.”
After the reunion, Shayk publicly criticized Nick for comments he made about his profession.
“@nicklachey you are a huge t-t because your comment is sucking veterans in,” he wrote on Instagram on Monday. “You do understand that becoming a veterinarian is much more difficult than becoming a human doctor?”
Shayk faced significant backlash throughout Season 2 for “disrespecting” Deepti. After he blindly became engaged to her in pods, he made it clear to co-stars, friends, and family members that he was not physically attracted to her.
However, the self-proclaimed villain has since taken responsibility for his actions and apologized to his ex-fiancee, whom he knew he had “offended”.
“Deepti, I’m really sorry about some of the things I said,” he said in a video posted to Instagram on Tuesday.
“Things that, frankly, just could not be said or said differently. Things that should never have been said on national television.”
Deepti, who told “I don’t want” Shake at the altar, recently told Page Six that she is still sticking to her decision.
“We talked about how we struggled with the intimate part of our relationship, but it was hard to watch,” the reality star explained. “It was hard [to see] the way he talked about me.”
She added, “Some of the things he said were completely disrespectful even to a friend. So, yes, it was hard to look back, but I’m trying to put that in the past and just move forward.”
The second season of “Love is Blind” is already streaming on Netflix.