‘Love Is Blind’ Star Taylor Shuts Down Claims She Made Up the Instagram Story About Daniel

Love Is Blind star Taylor Haag shut down claims that she fabricated the story about her fiancé, Daniel Hastings, following her on Instagram before filming to deflect from the fact that she didn’t find him attractive.

"It's been really high highs and really low lows," Taylor, 32, said of fans’ reactions to her story in an interview with Entertainment Weekly published on Wednesday, February 19. "I've received quite a bit of harsh opinions … The overwhelming response that I've received is that I've made up this whole elaborate story to not look like a bad guy because I just wasn't attracted to Daniel. It's really shocking to me how quickly people come to these conclusions on your character based on a six-minute clip of a television show."

Viewers saw Taylor visibly distressed in episode 6 of Love Is Blind season 8 after meeting Daniel, 30, face-to-face for the first time. She believed that he had followed her on Instagram before arriving to film and had used details from her profile to manipulate their relationship. The colonoscopy nurse told Entertainment Weekly that she was “wracking” her brain to figure out why Daniel looked familiar.

Taylor continued, "And then I started to think of all of the big points that brought us so close together that seemed like fate. But then it was like, 'Is this too good to be true?' Which I did talk about in the pods because it was so harmonious leading up to that cliffhanger.”

She explained that before the show it “wasn’t uncommon” for men she didn’t know to follow her on Instagram because she was a “single girl.” Taylor added that “based on a lot of different factors,” she “came to the conclusion” that Daniel had known what she looked like and what some of her likes and dislikes were ahead of time. She then notified producers of her fears.

“We had a meeting the day after with production [where we told everyone if] we're going to continue to follow our journey or not, and in that meeting, I expressed these concerns that I was worried that he maybe knew what I looked like, which kind of just compromised the whole idea of the experiment for me," Taylor explained. "It was something I felt like I needed to discuss with him before I felt comfortable continuing on our journey or not. So I voiced those concerns and then the meeting was set up through production."

Taylor also said that she didn’t think Daniel had any idea what she was meeting with him about, and producers simply told him that she “needed to speak to him before [they] decided the next step in [their] journey together.”

While she can’t give any details regarding what happens next since the following episodes of Love Is Blind season 8 don’t premiere on Netflix until Friday, February 21, she did remind viewers that she’s “the founder and CEO of the spiraling club.”

“I do that pretty well. I also talk about overthinking in the pods; hence, how the cliffhanger came to be. That's just the way my brain works,” Taylor concluded.