Thompson was laid off from his job as a VP of marketing back in November, “And since then I’ve been looking for a new role in marketing and tech, and I have been not taken very seriously.” While that hasn’t been confirmed, he does say that the interviews he’s had since have been hampered by the looming shadow of Love Is Blind. “The feedback [I’ve gotten] was that they didn’t want my name, necessarily, associated with their company, because they were still in a sort of a start-up growth phase, and they just didn’t want the distraction,” Thompson explains. “So those are the types of things that happen.”
Thompson feels he’s no longer taken seriously since appearing in the show’s second season. “I’ve done everything right. I focused on my career, I saved… [but now] my unemployment’s gone, I had to cash out my 401k so I can just keep paying my mortgage,” he says. “I’m at the point where I’ve applied to over 400 jobs and I’ve got about two months left of paying my mortgage in my bank account.”
Thompson’s comments come in the wake of a number of reality stars across networks and platforms making noise about unionizing. Real Housewives alum Bethenny Frankel has spearheaded the effort, going so far as to hire some high-powered lawyers to explore making things official. And Thompson shares Frankel’s concerns about compensation, noting that contestants on Love Is Blind weren’t offered residual payments. “You get a thousand dollars-a-week stipend while you’re filming the show. So, I went the whole way, you know, till the very end, and got married. So I got $7,000, and then an additional three weeks, for After the Altar, which equated to $10,000 total for the entire thing,” he says.
Furthermore, Thompson co-founded the Unscripted Cast Advocacy Network Foundation in an effort to protect reality stars’ mental health in the face of poor working conditions. On Love Is Blind, he experienced “complete control and surveillance” by the show’s producers and constantly had to be “mic’d up and filming.” (The Insider report notably featured an anecdote about his ex-wife, Danielle Ruhl, having a severe mental breakdown that producers insisted on attempting to film.)
“No matter what reality TV show you’re watching, these people are human beings,” Thompson tells ET. “They have nuance… Perception is not always reality, and I think it’s time for all of us in reality unscripted casts to come together, unite and organize.”
