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Love Is Blind's Irina finally apologizes for 'mistreating people on the show'

"Truly, I want to add value to people and I want to make people feel seen, and who I was on the show was the complete, exact opposite of that person."

By

Sydney Bucksbaum

Published on April 3, 2023 03:41PM EDT

Love Is Blind season 4 contestant Irina Solomonova is finally apologizing for "mistreating people on the show."

Ever since the new season of Netflix's reality dating series premiered on March 24, viewers have criticized Irina and fellow contestant Micah Lussier for their mean girl behavior towards the other women in the pods, and for how Irina treated her then-fiancé Zack Goytowski. While Micah released an apology on Instagram last week for her actions, Irina stayed silent for nearly another week. She posted a video to her Instagram on Sunday where she addressed "mistreating people on the show."

"I want to start off by saying sorry that this video is a little delayed. I really wanted to take some time to process everything that has been going on this past week and really get my thoughts together before I responded," Irina starts off saying in the video. "The first thing I want to say is that I have privately apologized to the people that I have hurt and mistreated. Second of all, I wanted to say I am so, so sorry for the people that watched the show that felt frustrated, angry, hurt by the way that I was mistreating people on the show. It was very immature and naive of me in a lot of those situations."

Irina goes on to list her cast members she wronged, including her former fiancé and the other woman in the love triangle she sabotaged, Bliss Poureetezadi. "I just want to say that Zack, Bliss, Amber, Jackie, Micah, none of those people deserved to be treated the way that I treated them," she continues. "I am genuinely so, so sorry. Truly, I want to add value to people and I want to make people feel seen, and who I was on the show was the complete, exact opposite of that person. I feel like being on the show was like getting a mirror put in front of your face in the sense of seeing yourself from a different perspective, and that opened up so, so much to me and I'm still processing and going through everything that happened."

Irina adds that she's still "journeying this — if journeying is a word."

"I'm still journeying all of this and everything that happened and figuring out the person that I want to be and that I want to move forward to be," she continues. "But I know that none of those things were okay. Even Zack, he was so vulnerable with me and I so mistreated him and shut him out. And I hope that one day I get to share my experience and what was going on with me emotionally during that experience."

Throughout the first eight episodes of season 4, Irina was at the center of much of the drama as she and Micah gossiped about the other women contestants, laughed when others were rejected and crying in the pods, and lied to Zack about Bliss to get him to choose her as his fiancée (their engagement ended almost immediately when they took a post-pod trip Mexico, and Zack is now engaged to Bliss). Then in Mexico, Irina began flirting with Micah's fiancé Paul Peden and expressed her interest in him. Micah later confronted Irina about her inappropriate actions back in Seattle.

While speaking to EW before the season premiered, Irina admitted that flirting with Paul was her biggest regret. "I obviously regret that was my best friend's [fiancé]," she said. "Flirting with Paul in the pool, that was not who I am. That's not my character. I had too much alcohol and, yes, Paul was someone that I felt in energy with, but it was something I never wanted to pursue and haven't pursued and won't pursue. It was more in the sense of realizing the connection I had with him, I want that with my future husband. And I didn't have that with Zack."

Irina also confirmed that she and Micah have moved on with their friendship. "Micah still is my best friend today," she said. "And thankfully we've talked over it and I just feel like there's also a bigger picture and life is bigger than just this one month that we've been filmed."

Episodes 1-8 of Love Is Blind season 4 are now streaming on Netflix. New episodes drop Fridays.

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Love Is Blind's Irina finally apologizes for 'mistreating people on the show'

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