EXCLUSIVE: “It’s like what Mark says, this is what you would call ‘the f*ck around and find out” stage,’ former Love is Blind contestant Renee Poche tells Deadline today of a complaint by the National Labor Relations Board that hits at the heart of Reality TV. “I mean, I was supposed to do a vet show, and now maybe I can.”
In a sweeping December 11 document, the NLRB’s Minnesota bureau added fuel to Poche’s long running civil case against LIB producers Kinetic Content and Delirium TV by slamming the companies behind the Netflix streamed steamy series.
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This comes as the producers’ $4 million claims against Poche for publicly speaking out about what really went down during her never aired stint on LIB continues behind the closed doors of arbitration.
Specifically, the feds say the LIB producers, like most Reality TV producers, “intentionally misclassified its Love is Blind cast members, including Charging Party Thompson and Charging Party Poche, as non-employee ‘participants’ thereby inhibiting them from engaging in Section 7 activity and depriving them of the protections of the Act.” To that, and lambasting producers for restrictive NDAs and contracts that prevent Reality TV participants like Poche and her ex-Nick Thompson from essentially taking on any other type of work for ages, the soon-to-be Trump 2.0 dominated NLRB have set an April 22, 2025 hearing on the issues raised in their complaint.
Dialing in from the windy Houston rooftop of an animal shelter, Poche and her LA-based main lawyers Bryan Freedman and Mark Geragos spoke with Deadline after the NLRB complaint became public to delve into its implications for the LIB Season 5 participant directly, and the increasingly besieged unscripted industry overall. Pulling back the veil on a Poche settlement that never happened, the attorneys, who jointly have been representing an ever-growing number of Reality TV performers in the past year or so in their battle over NDAs and on-show treatment, also laid out how the NLRB’s actions over LIB could lead to unscripted unionization over time. Big time.
Or, as Garagos tells me today, “payback is a bitch.” BTW – lawyers for Kinetic and Delirium TV did not respond to request for comment from Deadline on the NLRB complaint. If and when they do, this post will be updated.
DEADLINE: Renee, you are still fighting the $4 million lawsuit behind closed doors with the producers of Love is Blind, but what is your take on the National Labor Relations Board getting involved to the extent they have, asking for contestants to be classified as employees?
RENEE POCHE: I’m very excited. It’s finally like someone’s really listening that can make a huge impact, Besides, of course, the lawyers and everyone that’s helped me to this point, I am also excited that it’s not just for me personally in my specific case, but the industry as a whole. It’s amazing, really, for all of us.
DEADLINE: These NDAs hold a tremendous amount of power. Do you think there’s a possibility that NDAs might be stripped away from these circumstances, these shows and people can speak freely?
POCHE: That’s the goal. I think that if anything making the NDA practical, in that you don’t give away spoilers or the very specific things that it would make sense to have an NDA for, having it, where you’re just free to talk about your life, and it doesn’t matter what happened on a TV show.
DEADLINE: Bryan, this action by the NLRB will likely have a spillover effect, as Renee said. Both you and Mark are involved in a number of cases in other aspects of Reality TV, so what do you see as the implications specifically here, and what do you see as the implications for the wider industry?
BRYAN FREEDMAN: I think it’s the most powerful thing that’s come down in the history of reality television. And the reason it’s so powerful is because they found something like 30 violations in these contracts. And these contracts aren’t just something that’s being used by Kinetic or by Netflix through Love is Blind. These are used throughout the industry. And if you look at it, this actually goes to the degree that it says that these people like Renee, who’ve signed these contracts, that they couldn’t work anywhere else.
DEADLINE: Was that all-encompassing?
FREEDMAN: Yes. They couldn’t be on podcasts, they couldn’t interview anywhere else, they couldn’t make money and take another job in the media at all within a year of being on the show.
All these people should be paid back. They should. They’re entitled to compensation for what they could have been working on. And that’s the real key, because not only is it going to wipe out confidentiality in the sense that you can’t talk about wrongs in the workplace, but most importantly, these people make no money. They’re held to clauses that get them in trouble if they speak.
DEADLINE: And potentially now?
FREEDMAN: This way, if they’re on a show, they can still get a job, or they could go, like Renee, you know, be a veterinarian. She can do whatever she wants to do. She can have a podcast. She can be in the media. She can be on another show. Up to now, all of these people are restricted to the measly, you know, small sum that they get in reality television. So, as the result of this is what Mark and I have been talking about all along. I mean, Mark and I have a ton of people lined up and ready to assert these claims and be paid by these networks.
MARK GERAGOS: The NLRB got interested for the same reason Bryan and I did.
DEADLINE: Which was?
GERAGOS: We were doing a lot of these reality cases, and then Renee’s case came up. If you had to script the most outrageous hypothetical of the corporation taking advantage of somebody, this is it. The idea of four violations and seeking millions of dollars for somebody who was paid $8,000 …well, I remember sitting with Bryan, asking “are these people insane?”
The fact was, it was the perfect storm of a case to display how absurd this whole situation was.
Now, you know, I like to say the proof is in the eating of the pudding. Now it’s time they went and took it to an extreme. Now we’re going to take it to an extreme. We are. Payback is a bitch. They’re the ones who created this situation, they’re now going to have to pay every single one of these people who they obliterated or tried to obliterate, and give Renee credit, I mean, the producers offered her at one point after we kept beating them around the head, you know. Oh, do you want to just walk away?. No, I’m not going to walk away, after all this nonsense.
DEADLINE: So Kinetic put a settlement on the table?
POCHE: Yes.
FREEDMAN: It was a few weeks ago. I think they saw the gauntlet coming down on them a few weeks ago. Yeah, a settlement, as long as she didn’t speak about it.
GERAGOS: It’s crazy, you can’t just restrict people’s livelihood. I mean, it’s unbelievable. We’re not going to let you speak…
DEADLINE: Renee, what is your sense of this now which is now, according to the NLRB, you are seen as an employee, retroactive to January 19, 2023. You have to be paid …
POCHE: (LAUGHS) It’s like what Mark says, this is what you would call “the f*ck around and find out” stage. I mean, I was supposed to do a vet show, and now maybe I can.
DEADLINE: Is it that straightforward?
POCHE: Well, no. Everyone now is scared of me, to work with me. I don’t blame them, from a production standpoint, because they don’t want to get involved or be on the bad side of Netflix. I get that. But, I mean, just to be able to finally say stuff …I actually am still scared of them, and I really haven’t talked with many people about it, but I just want to be free and clear to actually finally talk.
Also, what these companies had to go through with strikes with the quote, unquote, real actors and actresses, now they’ll have to deal with it all in one with us too, with Reality TV eventually. I mean, if you think about it, half the stuff we had to do with acting. It’s just them telling us what to say, what to do, where to be. It’s all the same thing in the end.
FREEDMAN: It’s all going to work together because you have the NLRB, which is dealing with federal law, you have what we’re bringing, which is dealing with California law, which is and should be more restrictive even than federal law. So, whatever the NLRB is doing, trust me, they’re going to do more in California, as they always do, to help employees and overall. Ultimately, this is going to lead to, people like Renee are going to be treated like human beings.
It’s a sweeping complaint that all the studios you’re going to have to deal with, and I wouldn’t be surprised once SAG-AFTRA gets involved in this.
DEADLINE: Really?
FREEDMAN: Yes, we’ve not only been working with the NLRB Mark and I, we’ve been working with SAG-AFTRA and others. There will be unionization. This is going to be a reckoning, but just like we predicted.
GERAGOS: Dominic, it isn’t like Bryan and I have been shy about telling these studios and these entities, you know, guys, this is not going to last – the pendulum swing is coming. Up to now, you’ve been able to use these shows, and use these people as your proxies for profit. That day is over. Those days are over
FREEDMAN: I’ll just add that we’ve confidentially settled a number of these already from studios that are afraid that this is going to be sweeping legislation and sweeping rule changes coming from guilds and judges. This is just the beginning.