Don’t Play With Love Is Blind’s Laura Dadisman

I’m not gon’ hold y’all: The first few appearances of Laura Dadisman in this season of Love Is Blind initially turned me off. Dadisman left the pods engaged to Jeramey (with an a) Lutinski, and something about her character didn’t sit right. She had a very Stephanie McMahon meme presentation: the Girl Boss willing to grind out hours in the boardroom to get a deal done, with a strange abhorrence to Hawaiian shirts and a nosiness that really didn’t sit right with me. (Like most, I really hated that “bean dip” moment; like, please grow the fuck up.) But as we near the conclusion of season six, I can say that my initial read of Dadisman was wrong. Maybe it was the edit or my aversion to a very specific kind of lively white woman, but it took a minute for me to come around on her character — one that is, yes, nosy but discerning, hard-charging but vulnerable, loud but sincere. Once she showed herself to be a real-ass friend to Jessica Vestal and Chelsea Blackwell during their relationships with Jimmy Presnell and an ace strategist in dealing with Lutinski when he lied about staying out all night with his pod-ex, Sarah Ann, I found myself more aligned with her than I would have imagined. Lutinski was absolutely fucking with the wrong one, and we all could see what Lutinski had coming at the end of episode nine when he walked into Dadisman’s well-laid trap, implicating himself and ending their engagement. Dadisman spoke with Vulture to discuss a few initial red flags she saw with her ex-beau, laying the Trap, and what it truly means to be a girl’s girl.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I’m going to be honest with you: When I first started watching this season, I didn’t know if I would like you. Just being real. But one of the first moments where I was like, Okay, she might be a real one, is when Jimmy wasn’t reciprocating love for Jess. You heard Chelsea, went straight to Jess, and said, “He ain’t the one for you. I can’t tell you why. I can’t tell you who I heard it from, but you got to go.” Like, all right, Laura is a girl’s girl. 
The female friendships in the lounge are one of the best parts of the entire thing. I’m a girl’s girl until the day I die. What wasn’t shown is that we had been in the lounge for hours all day, discussing every aspect of that shitty date that Jess had with Jimmy. She felt guilty about staying away from her daughter every single day, but she was there looking for her man and was expecting Jimmy to come correct the next morning and say, “I love you and you’re the one for me.” I knew that’s why she was going to stick it out however many nights it took for Jimmy to come correct. So when Chelsea came to me with that information in confidence, I was like, Shit, what she’s sticking around for is not what’s going to happen.

At the same time, Jess and Chelsea were also friends. So it was tough. I want to respect Chelsea’s feelings and what she told me in confidence, but at the same time, I want to give Chelsea space to scream it from the damn rooftops and let us celebrate her love. So I tiptoe around here and discreetly tell Jess, “Hey, baby girl, you wanted to leave on your own terms with your head held high. He’s not your man. Get the hell out of here. Go back to your daughter.” At the end of the day, my girls know where my heart was.

That initial connection that you had with Jeramey felt like opposites attracting. He’s clearly goofier than you are. 
I have two sides to my personality. I get down to business. I have always been corporate girlie to my core, but I’m also very goofy. I’m constantly saying crazy things, saying crass things, goofing around with the girls. So that goofy side of me is absolutely there, and the version of Jeramey that I met in the pods I was head over heels about. I had heard he had a goofy side, but to see it in real life and how childish it was — it wasn’t alarming right off the bat, but it was just interesting.

He came in with a kind of seriousness at first. He was there to do the experiment with his whole heart. But then when y’all got together and he was, like, blowing raspberries on your neck and “playing chin violin” with a balloon in the pool, I was like, Yo, this motherfucker needs to calm down a little bit.
I said that several times. Relax. There could have been nerves involved. I probably was acting a little off as well. But it was just such a switch from an “I’m a get-shit-done type of guy.” Then it was just goofy, goofy, and I was like, What is happening? I love a little goofiness, but what’s happening here? It was a quick switch, for sure. I hadn’t seen that side of him, but it seems like the guys in the lounge did.

Red flag.
People can hide behind those walls, I’m telling you.

Speaking of: that argument. That scene. 
I haven’t seen it yet, so I’m foaming at the mouth!

The scene starts. We open up; he’s home. You put your Stanley cup on the counter. He’s clutching onto that motherfucking pillow. You come in …
He really thought that pillow was gonna save him!

For dear life! You come in, and it’s just clear something happened, and you’re pissed.
He felt the rage. You could cut the tension in that room with a knife. It was a rough morning.

The editors built it up, too. The dramatic music and everything. You come in, you sit there, and you’re already ready to go. You break down the whole story: coming home at 6 a.m., waiting for him to tell the truth. I broke down your shit, line by motherfucking line; that part when you ask if he “hung back with Sarah Ann until 5 a.m. just talking” when you already knew that he’d gone to her house!? It was a perfectly laid trap. You just knew sumn was going on. 
You obviously saw it play out, but I knew what I knew no matter what. He was going to sit there and lie continuously, lie to my face, but I knew what I knew.

You gave him opportunities to tell the truth. Like that point when you say, “You’re denying leaving the bar?” And he says, “I don’t wanna talk about that right now.” And then you just drop the hammer, “You weren’t at Lost & Found last night.” Did you know that he would lie?
He had already been lying before the cameras started rolling. He had all morning to tell the truth, and we basically took a break. I said, “Come with the correct story; help yourself.” What he didn’t know is that he had shared his location the night before. We filmed the day before, met my family, and had this beautiful day with my dogs; I thought it was a lovely weekend. Then he goes out that night for a beer. He wasn’t a big drinker and all this stuff, but he was kind of weird when he said, “I’m going to go meet the guys for a beer.” I’m like, “Go live your life, babe.”

Before he left, I said, “If you run into Sarah tonight, handle yourself correctly.” He’s like, “Oh, my God, I’m not going to see her.” So I wake up at 5 a.m. and I see that he’s not there. His car’s not there. I’m thinking he’s dead somewhere wrapped around a tree. I go to get my phone to call him. I see he shared his location after he left and after I went to sleep. I check his location, and I see he’s in a random part of town — only one person lives there. The car stays there for 30 or 45 minutes. I’m like, “He’s really doing this.” I went back to sleep and said, “I’ll handle this tomorrow.” I wake up, he slept in the living room and immediately I started questioning him. It was lie, lie, lie, lie. He lied about what time he got home. He lied about where he was and lied about why he stayed out — lied about why he was sleeping in the living room instead of coming up to the bed.

So when I sat down on that sofa, I was expecting the truth and for him to get his story straight — and he didn’t. He had formulated some fucking story with Sarah Ann, and that’s what he was going to hang on to. I felt like I was playing chess, and he was playing checkers. So I was like, “I gave you the chance to be a man and own up. We were engaged. This is a real-ass relationship. You met my family the day before I was supposed to meet your mom. If you want to salvage this, tell the damn truth, and let’s work through it.” He just wouldn’t do it. That’s when I was like, “All right, fine: You’re saying you never left the parking lot of this part of town — why was your car ten miles north at 5 a.m.?” He freaked out. That’s when he said, “I’m not doing this.” And I said, “Then I’m not doing this.”

It’s very clear that he didn’t really know you. Like, the audience doesn’t know you either, but as a viewer, I was like, To believe that that lady is not going to just be on top of her shit? That’s crazy. You don’t know your fiancé, bruh. 
Exactly. You’re fucking with the wrong one. You’re not sitting here and lying to my face thinking I don’t smell your bullshit. I was devastated. You’re fucking with my life. And you’re acting like it’s a game.

He did his shit, right? Jeramey and Sarah Ann are sticking to a story — that nothing physical happened that night — which I personally don’t really believe, but if it was just that he went out until 6 a.m. and then he told the truth about it, do you think y’all might’ve had a real chance?
People will make mistakes. They will fuck up. They can say they’re going to handle themselves one way, and then shit happens. I get it. But the part that I couldn’t get past was the doubling down, tripling down on the lying. If he had come with, “I fucked up.” I don’t even know what the hell the story could be. “I needed closure. She needed closure. I felt bad. I was too nice. I felt I owed her this,” this, that, and the other. If he had been honest about his bullshit breakup with her in the pods — which wasn’t even a real breakup, he left the door wide open for her where he told me something completely different — I do think we could have worked through it. I think we had so much love.

I thought both of us wanted it so badly, and it was going so well. But once the lies started, they started compiling, and it was just, Who are you? But he made the decision for me. That amount of disrespect to not only lie and connive but then double down on this story and then have her corroborate and get other people involved — all to make me look like I’m the one gaslighting. I feel like so many men and women do that to their partners in relationships. It’s bullshit. I think you need to stand up for yourself, trust your gut, and not let someone play in your face like that. No way. No matter how much you love ’em or care about ’em. If they’re not willing to have some flexibility and be honest with you, then they gotta go.