Every great season of reality television has a “villain” — and from the first episode of Netflix’s “The Ultimatum: Queer Love” it was clear that title was given to contestant Vanessa Papa.
Vanessa, 30, came onto the show with her partner, Xander Boger, who issued the marriage "ultimatum."
In the first few episodes of the season, Xander, also 30, repeatedly emphasized how much she wanted to marry her girlfriend. Meanwhile, Vanessa seemed excited to explore new connections with the other cast members.
Contestants Lexi Goldberg and Vanessa initially developed a connection, and they considered choosing to couple up with each other for their three-week trial marriage. But during one awkward date, Lexi immediately became disinterested and questioned Vanessa’s motives for coming on the show.
Lexi publicly voiced her concerns to girlfriend Rae Cheung-Sutton before all the contestants chose their new partners in Episode Two. Other cast members also chimed in to share why they felt Vanessa was not on the show for the "right reasons," a reality show catchphrase for someone on the show for a reason other than the show's stated purpose (i.e. social media stardom).
"Ultimatum" creator Chris Coelen, who is also behind Netflix's juggernaut "Love Is Blind," discussed cast members' misgivings in an interview in Variety. "They felt like Vanessa wasn’t authentically participating in the process or that Vanessa wanted to be there more for fame," he said.
Before “The Ultimatum: Queer Love” released its first group of episodes on May 24, Vanessa opened up to TODAY.com about how it felt to hear a roomful of people explain why they disliked her.
She said the contestants “barely knew each other” when they called her out at the group dinner in Episode Two.
“You really only knew who you were coming in with, truly,” she pointed out. “Other than that, we basically had a week where we were going on dates with each other and some people I only had a five minute date with. That was it.”
The self-described influencer continued, “None of us really knew each other. So, it was pretty hard to have Lexi have such strong feelings about me when I felt like I don’t even know you, Lexi. You don’t even know me.”
In the moment, she decided to just sit there and accept the criticism.
“You can’t defend yourself to someone who doesn’t even know you or to someone who’s not willing to listen,” she said, adding that that was one of the biggest lessons she learned while filming the show.
She shared, “At some point, I just had to stop even thinking about defending myself. Because no matter what I said, it just snowballed more.”
Following the release of the batch of episodes, Vanessa trended on social media as viewers blasted her for her behavior on the show and cheered on Lexi. One Twitter user even labeled Vanessa as “toxic.”
Vanessa had prepared herself for negative comments after being constantly surrounded by “strangers who didn’t like (her)” while shooting the reality series.
Despite the tense environment, Vanessa said, “I still learned to love myself” and “never doubt myself.”
Looking back at her experience on “The Ultimatum: Queer Love,” Vanessa shared, “I am who I am and I should be proud. If people don’t like me, (that’s) totally fine because not everyone’s going to.”
She also spoke about the significance of being on a season of “The Ultimatum” that solely focused on queer relationships.
In the season premiere, Vanessa and Xander shared that they reconnected years after they first met while dating two friends in high school. They revealed to each other that they were attracted to women and started dating.
Vanessa told TODAY.com that she realized she was queer around the age of 18, when she questioned if she was only into men.
“For me, it was such an important journey and a painful, scary internal process,” she explained. “To question everything I had assumed about myself for those first 18 years of my life.”
Speaking about how that realization led to her being on “The Ultimatum: Queer Love,” she said, “And so now that I’m so proud to be out and to be queer, to be part of a queer cast and to showcase queer love and romance and intimacy, it’s just such an honor.”
“To show my authentic self and be vulnerable … it was incredible,” she concluded.