PODCAST #433 LAUREN O’BRIEN TRANSCRIPT
? You are listening to the Reality Steve podcast with your host, Reality Steve. He’s got all the latest info and behind the scenes juice on grand season of The Bachelor and interviewing some of your favorite reality stars. Now here’s Reality Steve. What’s
up everybody? Welcome to podcast number 433. I’m your host Reality Steve.
Thank you all for tuning in. We got a great one for you today. My first ever love is blind contestant on this podcast out of 433 episodes. It is with Lauren O’Brien. You are going to love her. She was the one whose relationship engagement ended in last week’s episodes. We talked to her about Dave, about peeing, about him wanting to know who had sex.
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The URL is factor meals. com slash factor podcast to get 50 percent off plus free shipping on your first box. So before we get started, wanted to tell you what’s on the daily roundup. That was posted a couple hours to go. I go over dealer, no deal Island because being in the central time zone, it did not air on Tuesday nights on Tuesday night because.
There was a speaker that took the airwaves for two hours. The president spoke for two hours. I didn’t even know this until I turned my TV on at seven o’clock. Was this something he threw together real quick? I don’t even know. Cause it wasn’t a state of the union that happens in February. Look, I don’t follow politics.
You know that I don’t talk politics on my show, but yeah, it’s seven o’clock when I tuned into dealer, no deal Island. I got that. And I said, Oh, well, I guess I’m not watching dealer, no deal Island till tomorrow. So I watched it yesterday. I got some thoughts on that. And then we’re going to talk about I also talked about survivor on the podcast today on the daily roundup and an Instagram post from Katie bigger that I thought was interesting as well.
We go over that and more on the daily roundup. But as I said, first time ever interviewing somebody from love is blind. I’m only three seasons into this show. I never watched seasons one through five. I watched six, seven, and eight. So I watched Charlotte, watched DC last season. Obviously we are only two episodes left of Minneapolis and tomorrow is the finale.
Tomorrow is wedding day. You’ll get resolution on the four remaining couples and then the reunion airs Sunday night. So I think for the next few weeks, I’m going to have the contestants from this show on. I don’t know who and when, but I’ve got interview requests out for. A few of them, so you’re going to be hearing more love is blind coverage on this podcast, especially on Monday.
We’ll go over everything that you see in tomorrow’s finale. I’m not going to give anything away. I have seen the finale, have not seen the reunion show. I’ll be getting that tomorrow, but I have seen the finale and we’ll discuss that on Monday’s podcast. But Lauren obviously is no longer on any of the episodes.
Well, clearly she’s on the reunion episode, but she is not in the finale. Well, I take that back. She actually shows up to somebody’s wedding just to sit there and watch. I don’t believe she has any speaking parts in tomorrow’s episodes, but you know what I’m saying? So that’s the only time you see her, but her, her storyline with Dave is, is over.
So when I interviewed her and you’ll hear in the interview today, coming up. Momentarily, we’re going to, I try to keep it chronological, you know, when I have these contestants on, I really like to go in order of things that happen because if I bounce around all the place, I all the time, I feel like I’m going to miss stuff.
So we start out with life in the pods, then we go to, all right, you went to Honduras. Let’s talk what happened there. Okay. You came back to Minnesota. Let’s definitely talk what happened there. And then we also talk, Hey, watching this back over the last three or four weeks. What have you been going through all the stuff that you’ve been seeing online stuff like that?
What Dave has been saying publicly a really really good interview. I loved talking to Lauren. She was excellent If you expect her to trash Dave, you’re not gonna get that but I will say Lauren makes it perfectly clear How she feels that she was treated in the relationship and how she feels about the relationship as a whole and We do dive into some of the theories out there Regarding Dave and she gives her honest opinion.
It’s all I ask of my guests is to be honest. We don’t get into anything else Because this podcast, it was recorded and is airing before the finale. So we don’t talk about any other couples. We don’t talk about anything that happens. This is strictly 50 minutes of me talking to Lauren about her experience on the show and her relationship with Dave.
And then a little bit, obviously, of his relationship with Molly, because that kind of comes into play. And then even Molly’s conversation with Dave, which was a really, really big thing for me, because I thought not Molly nailed it on the head when she spoke to him. On episode, I believe it was 11 at Buck Hill.
That was a very revealing conversation and something that I 100 percent agreed with. And you can tell that Lauren was very much in support of the way Molly stuck up for her in that conversation, because I think a lot of us thought going into that conversation, Dave and Lauren were broken up at that point.
Granted, they had just broken up the day before. But we didn’t know, was Dave already going to start making the moves on Molly, was he going to try and see if there was something still there between them? Was Molly possibly interested in something there between Dave? And then we see the scene play out and it’s like, no, no, no, Molly is 100 percent siding with Lauren and being a very, very good friend.
And there was nothing like that going on between Dave and Molly, which there shouldn’t have been. And Props to Molly for doing that and calling Dave out to his face. So, so much we talk about in this episode. It’s like I said, it’s 50 minutes long. She hasn’t done a podcast interview this long. She’s definitely done some written interviews.
She went on Nick Vial’s podcast, but he only got it for 25 minutes. I got her for double that. So anyway, that’s what you’re going to get coming up momentarily. All right, let’s get started. Podcast number 433. All right, let’s bring her in. You’ve seen her on this season of love is blind season eight.
Unfortunately, maybe fortunately, if you look at it a particular way, she saw her engagement end on last week’s episode of love is blind to Dave. Very happy to have her on the podcast. It is Lauren O’Brien. Let’s bring her in Lauren. Thanks for coming on.
Hi, thanks for having me,
you know, you are my first love is blind interview ever on this podcast.
I, I’m kind of a late comer. I only started watching in season six, so I’ve only seen, what was it? Charlotte DC and now, and now Minneapolis, but I am now a regular and you’re my first guest. So this is going to be, this is going to be good. And you obviously one of the more interesting figures of the season went through quite a journey.
On this show, I want to break this interview down into three segments, the pods, Honduras, and then back in Minneapolis and then actually post Minneapolis of now watching the show. So let’s start in the pods. I want to know, do you remember how many men you had spoken to before you got to Dave or was Dave your first one?
Do you remember where he was in that lineup on the first day? Yeah,
he was actually my 15th out of 16 guys that day.
Oh, wow. That many?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I don’t know 16, but wow. He was 15. So, and we all saw it. They showed it in the teasers. We saw it in the episode. He literally says to you, how old are you?
Oh, I’m 30. Oh, you must not be attractive or whatever. He said something along those lines. Again, I get what he was trying to do, but in a situation like this, where you can’t read body language and you can’t actually see a person saying that to you. You were a little taken aback by what we saw. Did it bother you more than it did?
Or did you just think it was just a poor run at a joke?
I think it was a poor run at a joke. At the time, it felt so much lighter than it’s shown, like, on, in the episode. I mean, it was obviously, it was followed up with a laugh. And, like, we kind of, like, did a little shooting the shit after that. So it, it felt much more like that.
I wouldn’t say that was something that like screamed, Oh my God, I actually need to walk out the door right now.
But then when you watch the show and you saw this was like some sort of opening line to all the women that he spoke to or maybe, or maybe when you got back to the lounge and you guys talked about people that you had had conversations with, was it going around that?
Yeah, there’s this guy that keeps making Almost insults when we first talked to him, where you didn’t know until you saw the episodes.
Honestly, no, because, like, his, that joke or that line was not even close to some of the weirdest shit that we were hearing from some of the other guys that you don’t see a ton of that obviously, like, you probably don’t see a ton of them because of that.
I was thinking, too, about how I, watching it back, you see him say that to a lot of the women, but I was also his 15th. I, I wonder if he learned a little bit how that joke was or wasn’t landing, because you see him, When he gets to me, he even says, I’ll be a little nicer to you. Why are you here? Like he phrased it differently by the time he got to me.
So I wonder if that he picked up on some of those things as time went on.
So you’re going along with Dave and obviously other men. And we know, you know, the pods last, I believe right around 10 days, but was there a particular conversation that you had with Dave where either something we saw or something we didn’t, where you found yourself going.
Oh, wow. I’m starting to fall for this guy.
I mean, I honestly don’t know if there was one particular thing. You do see there is a clip where we’re talking about, like, I ask him his deepest, darkest secrets, and he’s like, I’m starting to have feelings for you, and he was so validating throughout the pods.
And of course, as you see, he validates Molly, too. But he was the one that was so consistently starting and ending dates talking about our connection and how he felt about me and It felt like as time went on, he was being more vulnerable. He was letting himself feel all of these feelings. I think I felt that growth from him a little bit as those days were going on.
So. We saw it in the lounge, but with editing and timing, I don’t know exactly at what point it occurred, the whole Molly and Dave and Lauren and Dave. We knew that Dave had two women, and it was Lauren and Molly. I don’t know how much talking goes on. It seems like some women come back to the lounge and Freely express sometimes, Hey, who my number one is, or I really like this guy or even the way they describe someone they’re talking to, maybe someone else can pick up on something like, Oh, I know who she’s talking about.
They don’t have to name them by name. When did you know that Dave was Molly’s number one?
So, yeah, and the girls were not really talking that much about names, especially in the first half of things. So you see when Molly tells me that Dave is her number one, but that was early on. Like, that was probably day three or four.
And so at the time, Dave, he wasn’t, Dave kind of went back and forth between my first and second as time went on, but I had three or four other connections when Molly told me that. So I remember being like, okay, I like Dave, and like, it sucks to hear that she likes him too. But I really didn’t, at the time, see it as like, oh shit, now we gotta figure this out.
At the time, I was still exploring other options. It wasn’t toward the end when Molly had come in and made that comment about like, okay, I think I’m his number one, or he said I’m his number one, and I was like, okay, well then what’s the point of me being here? Because at that point, as of that day, I think the day before, I’d ended things with the other guys that I was talking to.
parted ways. So it wasn’t until that very end when Molly had said that, that I was like, okay, I actually need to tell Dave how I feel because I really hadn’t up until that point.
So what was the thing that put you over the edge with Dave? What was it that made you end it with the other guys and be like, I want all my eggs in the Dave basket at this point?
I think the biggest thing is it is very emotionally draining to I guess maybe emotionally draining isn’t the best way to describe it because it is exciting, you’re talking to these people about futures and things like that, but it kind of felt like Dave and I were progressing and we’re going a lot deeper than the, like at the time, two other guys that I was talking to.
I was having fun with the other people I was talking to, but it kind of got to a point that I was like, okay, I could spend two hours for each of these guys tomorrow. And be probably pretty tired at the end of the day. Or I could think about what is my strongest connection right now and lean into that.
That’s. And so that’s kinda how I got toward the end of, okay, it’s Dave.
So when did the breakup with Molly happen? And I mean, it’s weird because obviously we know this was a year ago, so I don’t even know at the time when you found out he broke up with Molly, maybe, you know, the way she told you. But then watching it back us were sitting there almost cringing like he really was trying to put it on her or I mean, we even heard him say, like, well, I thought I thought it was clear.
And she’s like, nah, you weren’t at all
right.
When you watched his breakup with Molly, is that the way you remember her telling you it went down? Or when you watch it, you were like, Oh, wow, that was not the greatest breakup.
It is pretty close to how I remember her telling me. And I will say I was surprised.
Because when I, you see me talking to Dave, and I’m like, kind of pouring my heart out, I did not say, you need to make a decision. I was just saying, Molly’s been telling you how she feels, I haven’t really told you how I felt, cards are on the table. And so when Molly came in, it took me a minute to register for the fact that they had just broken up.
Like, I literally, I thought that they just had a difficult conversation, and we were all going to go home and see each other the next day. So she’s telling me that he, like, wanted to pursue things with me. And at the time, this is the thing where I give Molly so much credit, is I could tell that I think she wanted to tell me more, but she didn’t want it to hurt me and Dave’s relationship.
And so she even says at one point, like, promises are made, and I say you can tell me, but I think she was, like, doing a really good job. She just didn’t want to mess with us at that point, which is way more kinder than she needed to be. It wasn’t until after we had left the pods and kind of everything ended where she was telling me how their breakup happened and she said that he was really trying to get her to say it and she was pushing back a little bit and then he made that comment like I thought I just did and she was like no.
Well, when the breakup with Molly happens, and you’ve basically established that it’s just down to you two, once you, once you got out of it, once you’re in Honduras, and I want to, we’ll go back to the reveal. In a second, but once you’re in Honduras and based on what he told you in Honduras versus what you ended up seeing on television with the breakup with Molly, did he leave any things out in terms of what he told you of how he ended it?
Cause I’m sure you didn’t talk to Molly. Yeah. You wouldn’t have talked to Molly really about it until after you got back to Minneapolis and got settled into your life with Dave. Whereas you went to Honduras with Dave. How did he explain? His relationship with Molly. Was it a little bit deeper watching it back?
Was it deeper than you thought it was, or how did you feel about the whole, how he told you his relationship with Molly was
to be honest, we really didn’t talk about his relationship with Molly a ton in Honduras or after the fact, like it, it really did feel like after. We had come together the night that he and Molly broke up, like it was us from there on out.
Of course, I, we were, we talked about it a little in terms of what that conversation sounded like, but all he had really shared is kind of his perspective watching it back. So he’ll even, he probably said I was telling her that I wanted to be with you, and then she pushed back a little bit, and, and I said, I thought that’s what I said.
Like, I, he really did tell me his version of things, and it is how he sees it himself. Does that make sense? Yeah. No, it does. No, I get it.
I, I’m, I’m curious, in the pods, Obviously the fans see more red flags than probably you do in the pods, but just in the pods part of it, and it might not even have been a major one, but was there any, if you had hesitations about getting engaged to this Dave guy through a wall, what was the, what was the red flag sticking out in your head?
If you had any, maybe you didn’t,
he didn’t know who Cat Stevens was. And that’s so concerning to me. No, I’m just kidding. I think that we talk about our families a lot. Yeah. Obviously you hear him talk about his sister, and he does mention in the beginning about how, like, she wasn’t super excited about him doing this, and she was worried about it, and she, like, she was definitely in the back of his mind.
And then as time went on, I remember like during our engagement, he even says like, I don’t really, I know she’s going to love you. I don’t care about that anymore. And I remember being like, I love to hear this. However, this is a quick jump. This is still your sister. This is still your family. And so I think knowing how much her opinion on it was weighing on him would have been something that I.
Clocked a little bit sooner.
I can’t remember. Did he say in the pods? My sister doesn’t want me to get engaged at the end of this thing, but I told her, you know, it’s my life I’m gonna live it. Did he say that in the pods?
No, but he did
say that he was did he say his sister is worried that he’s gonna meet somebody that’s just out for clout and Instagram followers and stuff like that
Not even that specific.
He was just more of like my sister is I don’t know if she thinks that this experience would be the best way to find someone. Maybe he said it like that.
Okay. One quick thing before we get to the reveal. Because I always find this fascinating because Love is Blind is different than Bachelor, which I cover because Bachelor just brings in People from all over.
And there’s a chance that some people might have a past and know each other. You probably didn’t know any of the other 15 women once you met them in the lounge, but when you started to talk to them, I gotta believe there’s gotta be somebody where you had mutual friends or a mutual connection.
Totally. We all kind of did. And I remember one of the most bonding moments between. Me, Sarah, and Taylor is we are between the pods and the getaways and we have this like seven hour layover And so you’re just hanging out. I mean none of us have our phones and we like made these random mutual friend connections with A high school friend and a college friend and we just bonded over that.
Yeah, we’re all, I feel like every person on the cast, I could find some kind of second tier connection to them.
Did anybody go to the same high school or same college?
Two girls, Molly and Yemi, had known of each other from dancing and they had one mutual friend that knew that they were both going on it but didn’t tell any of, either of them.
So they were surprised when they showed up the first day. But that’s all I know for at least the girls.
Where did you go to college?
Madison.
Oh, you went to UW? Mm hmm. Okay. So, go Badgers. All right.
Go Badgers.
So, the reveal. When you saw him for the first time, number one, did he look like what you thought he would look like?
And number two, was he somebody you would typically go for looks wise?
So I remember saying, like, I tried so hard not to think about what he looked like, but based on the information that I had, he I was like, he, I just know, looks like a white Minnesotan. I could just picture it very clearly. And when the doors open, first of all, they make it seem like you can see them.
I could not see him until I was like three feet in front of him. Or I think my brain was just, like, combusting at the time. But he, he looks like a white Minnesotan. Like, he is exactly what I would have pictured. But I had such a hard time. Like, my brain just could not connect the fact that this was the person that I’ve been talking to.
And I think that combined with it was the first big moment with a ton of cameras. I just. I was anxious. And I, I feel like you can see that a little bit. I do feel like he’s someone that I would be into outside of this. I don’t know. He’s like a conventionally attractive person. It’s not like I would have ran the other way.
But my brain was having a hard time with that.
That’s funny. You said he’s a white Minnesotan. I think the consensus among the people watching this season is all the guys. They all look the same. All right. So let’s, let’s go to Honduras. And the first thing I want to ask is it, it’s not even about the relationship.
There’s two things I want to ask that have nothing to do with your relationship. Number one, watching the episodes back. Did you know that he was asking all the other couples if they had had sex yet? And number two, how did you feel about again, watching him back? Maybe you knew at the time. So you can answer that too.
Or maybe you didn’t know until you watched it back him telling everybody that she pees a lot. Like, I’m curious to know what, did you know about any of this?
Okay, so I’ll start with the sex part. I, it didn’t really surprise me. He is very, he doesn’t filter through his questions or his thoughts. And so,
seeing
that, and like, of course we’re, the whole point of this trip is to figure out everyone’s physical connection.
Like, figure out your physical connection as a couple. And so that was like what we’re supposed to be talking about and thinking about and so watching him do that I’m like that does not surprise me at all I feel like that was a very dave moment And I do remember You know, I sat down with all the guys too and kind of talked about me and dave and a lot of them brought up you know, how do you feel about dave really speaking his mind and saying what he thinks for that filtering.
And I remember being like, I mean, in terms of our relationship, I’m really never questioning where his head’s at. He’s always telling me how he feels about things. So I didn’t see it as the biggest, most alarming thing in the moment. It did give me pause to think. What am I not, what questions are being asked that I’m not aware of?
Yeah.
I’m not, in terms of him telling people that I pee a lot, again, we’re having long conversations. That is definitely a thing, like we were talking a lot about our sleep habits and he snores, I pee. It was a very, It was tough to figure out dynamic.
Wait, so did you on the, is this, was this, is this a nervous thing?
Was this just something that happened in Honduras or like even today, like every night, are you getting up, are you getting up two or three times every night to pee or something like that?
I would say minimum once, but I, there was definitely a layer of, I just wasn’t sleeping that well throughout this whole experience.
I. I’m even now going reliving it. I am not sleeping well at all. That is usually the first thing to go for me. So it definitely is like, I’m awake. I can’t fall back asleep. What else do I have to do?
I go to the bathroom. All right. So the other thing I wanted to talk about before we get into the relationship in regards to Honduras is you.
Talked about this on your Instagram story, but I want you to relay it to people who didn’t see it, was the bikini wax comment. Because people seem to think that you used it as an excuse to get out of having sex with your fiance. Explain to people what happened in the conversation.
Yeah. Paria, can I dive into this too?
I know I’ve talked about it already before, but. Oh,
I think you can. Yeah.
Okay. So I will say to Netflix’s credit, I watched this back and it’s It’s pretty accurate in terms of a lot of conversations that we had, but this is the one that I’m like, that is actually not what I said. We were talking about how we had a few days between the pods and the getaways and we could go to appointments or like do things that we wanted to do.
And so we were talking about what we’ve been doing the last couple of days. So I was like, I got my nails done, I got a bikini wax, and I was supposed to go to a spin class, but then mid bikini wax, they’re talking about things that I can’t do for 24 hours. And I listed, like, a bunch of them. One of them is, like, get sweaty and work out, and another one is, like, have sex, because, again, it’d be, like, it would just, like, mess with everything down there.
And so I’m telling him this, and the way that they cut it makes it seem like, oh my gosh, I’m so bummed to not have sex with you. And, again, you see this play out, and they talk a little bit about our sex life, and, like, the thing that I feel like some people are missing, too, and Dave even says this, is, like, we were being intimate.
It’s not like that wasn’t happening. It just was, like, You weren’t having sex at that very moment.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that, I needed to clarify that because I’m like, they did me dirty.
Yeah, well, it’s, it was, I, I, I guess, like you said, the, not the honeymoons, whatever you want to call them, the The getaways, it’s, it’s where you find out.
Cause obviously you haven’t seen this person outside of the reveal. And it’s where you find out, like, is there any sort of physical connection? Some people jump into it right away. We’ve seen that in other seasons. Some people are just like, I need a little more time, which is totally understandable. But once everything started down in Honduras with you guys, now we talk about red flags down there.
I guess the first thing to come up that we all notice as an audience is him saying. The friend group thing. He knows, but he, wait, you don’t have your phones yet, right? You don’t have your phones until Minneapolis.
Right. Right.
But he did bring up, he knew, he did bring up people knew you, right?
Yes, okay, so we had figured this out.
Before cameras were involved, we were like in our little bungalow, and we were talking one night, and he was like, did you have a boyfriend before coming on the show? And I was like, no. The last guy that I dated was like a year ago. And he’s like, were you talking to someone? And I was like, I have actually been hooking up with this guy for the last couple of months.
He knew that I was going through this casting process. And he’s like, is his name so and so? And drops his name. And I was like, oh my god, how do you know that? And he’s like, I actually have a mutual friend with him, and my friends were telling me before coming on that there’s a girl going on this show that has a boyfriend.
And I literally, I remember being like, that’s not me. I wonder if there’s a different girl that came here with a boyfriend. Like, I’m immediately racking my brain to think about who this could be, not fully making the connection that I’m who he’s talking about. And so I kind of went through the backstory with him and the timeline and like who this person was and how I knew him.
And he was like, yeah, he really didn’t seem to be too phased by it when we first discovered this. And then the next day, we’re on the boat, and you see that conversation, and he brings it up on camera. And I remember being like, interesting that you’re bringing this up on camera. Like, I, I didn’t, there was a part of me that after we had that conversation the night before, I would have never thought we would have ever come back to that.
And of course the fact that that’s like our entire downfall, and that’s the entire story. But I just, I do remember being a little surprised that he brought that back up on camera. And then that started the conversation from there.
And I guess that’s what confused me. Because, like you said, there were no phones on the getaways.
So it’s like, wait, how did he make the connection? And he, it was basically kind of just a guess. He was saying before I went on the show, friends had told me, there’s this girl, and he just, I guess, assumed or wanted to ask if it was you. And that’s where I got confused. I was like, wait, how would he have ever heard from friends?
But he’s saying it was before he even went on the show. Okay.
Yeah, it still is interesting that he thought to ask me that.
