Ben Mezzenga's friend isn't blind to the criticism.
After viewers accused the Love Is Blind season eight star of hiring a diverse group of friends to appear on the show, one of his pals who made a cameo in the Netflix series, Lana Truong, shut down the speculation.
"Not a DEI hired friend!" Lana wrote on TikTok Feb. 23 alongside a slideshow of photos of her and Ben hanging out together over the years. "Time & date stamps to prove my friendship with @Ben Mezzenga."
Closing out her post, she quipped, "If only I was a paid actor!"
And when one TikTok user inquired whether she had "hard conversations about politics" with Ben—whose religious views were a recurring point of contention between him and fiancée Sara Carton—Lana provided further insight into their friendship dynamic.
"Definitely have before AND after filming of this," Lana replied in the comments, "because as a woman and POC, politics are very important to me."
Fans speculated that Ben hired paid actors to play his friends in order to win favor with Sara, who met Lana and three other members of the 28-year-old's squad in episode nine of the season. During the meeting, Sara confessed her initial concern that Ben's faith might conflict with her passion for equality and prevent him from accepting that her sister was gay.
In response, his female friend Leah Johnson said, "I have a girlfriend," while Lana—who described herself as "agnostic"—noted that she had had a similarly tough conversation with the developer about his beliefs.
"We sat and we talked for like 45 minutes," Lana shared, "and it felt so, like, energizing."
Following the episode, many fans weren't buying that Ben knew his onscreen pals all that well.
"I think he hired this diverse group 20 minutes before filming," one TikTok user wrote atop a clip of their introductions, while another accused Lana of fabricating her comments, writing, "The specific story about how he calls religion 'faith' was SOOO forced."
And while Sara and Ben haven't publicly addressed the friend accusation, Sara has made it clear that her values haven't shifted since falling for Ben.
"steak. xbox. dad bods. & equality, obvi," the 29-year-old wrote on Instagram Feb. 23, alongside snaps of her in the pods. "slide 3 I was just annoyed I wasn’t wearing my pink sweater."
New episodes of Love Is Blind drop on Feb. 28.
