APPEARING on a reality television show isn’t an easy decision, especially when you’re aware of potential backlash afterward.
One woman who appeared on the recent debut of Netflix’s Love is Blind: After the Altar Season 2 has pulled back the curtain about the horrific abuse she received – but says the experience made her an even stronger woman.
Love is Blind’s After the Altar: Season 2 aired on Sept. 16 with a few new faces gracing the screen.
One moment particularly irked viewers: the debut of a cast member’s new girlfriend, Jessica “Jessi” Palkovic.
When Palkovic met Love is Blind Season 2’s Salvador “Sal” Perez, she had no idea the dumpster fire of online hatred she would experience a year into their relationship that has since only made their bond stronger.
In an exclusive interview with The U.S. Sun, Jessi Palkovic shares how the public backlash affected her mental health and brought back traumatic memories she thought she healed from but also made her more confident and more in love.
But how did the pair’s love story begin?
She jokes that their relationship was a backward version of the Netflix dating show – where contestants date blindly in “pods”, agreeing to get engaged before discovering what the other looks like, to test the theory that love truly is “blind”.
Flashback to the summer 2021, when Palkovic and Perez were at the same party and fell in love at first sight.
They met at Perez’s sibling’s birthday party, during that interim period after he filmed the show and before it aired in February 2022, where she was a friend’s plus one.
At the time, Palkovic didn’t know who he was or that he was going to be on a television show, but the sparks flew on sight and continued ever since.
Their intense relationship bliss was cut short a month into dating because Palkovic had to get on a cruise ship and set sail for a six-month gig as a lead vocalist on Norwegian Cruise Lines, but the distance didn’t stop them.
“A month into being long-distance, he was like ‘I don’t want to be with anyone else’ and I was like ‘me neither!'” she says.
Jessi says she hated working on the cruise ship and the thing that got her through it was her man, Sal Perez.
“It was a long-distance relationship with a five-hour difference, so we would plan our days together,” she declares.
Upon her arrival, they quickly moved in together and kept their relationship a secret from the world, even while Perez’s season of Love is Blind aired.
Only two months after being together physically in person, they filmed the After the Altar Netflix special that brought a global microscope onto their lives shortly after.
Though her online trolls were quick to insist that she went on the show for personal and financial gain, Palkovic claims that she never got paid for her appearance on the show and even took a weekend off of work with a resulting pay cut to support her partner.
“I’m confident in myself and just happened to fall in love with a man on reality television”, she says when asked about the status of her mental health following the backlash.
The 29-year-old was such an intense target of social media bullying that it ultimately led to her Instagram account being temporarily shut down from being continuously reported.
“I didn’t do this for clout, I did this for fun,” she insists.
Shown by her unfiltered social media content, the free-spirited woman is a self-described firecracker and the complete antithesis of Perez’s Love is Blind Season 2 fiance, Mallory Zapata.
Perez and Zapata began their relationship in the pods, got engaged, and were an on-screen pairing for most of Love is Blind Season 2, before Perez left her at the altar.
Shortly after filming the show, he met the charismatic Palkovic.
She claims that Netflix producers actually wanted Perez to propose on the reunion special of the show but says they’re on their own timeline.
Before going on the show, she says that a producer asked each person individually how they felt about each other and wanted to use it as an opportunity for Perez to propose to Palkovic on the show.
After thinking about it, they decided against it because Palkovic says it “wasn’t part of their story” to get engaged on a reality TV show.
“We’re not going to get engaged to get boosted ratings…there’s no rush for us. If we’re going to be together forever, why do we have to rush to put a ring on it,” she shares.
She claims another situation that was “fabricated by producers” and paints her as being confrontational to Zapata was a conversation that she says was nipped and stripped by them.
“There was a lot of stuff they didn’t show towards me,” she states.
Palkovic clashed with her boyfriend’s ex-fiance on the show and famously told her “I’m not worried about you” to her boyfriend’s ex-fiance, however she now claims there was a complete first half to the conversation that was omitted from the aired episode.
“Mallory and Sal’s engagement on the show was filmed so long ago before that filmed conversation. I really meant ‘I’m not worried about any drama because Sal and I are solid’,” she shares as opposed to a dig at Mallory as a potential love interest.
She also claims that she was not treated with respect by Mallory, Deepti, or Natalie while filming, and says much of their “mean girl” behavior toward her was edited out of the final product.
She says the clashes with the other women on the show and her feelings of being ganged up on brought up old wounds from her youth that she had thought she healed.
“Doing this experience, I was 28 when I filmed the show, and the ones who were being awful to me are in their thirties, and I felt like I was back in grade school,” she states.
For most of her life, she says she was told she was too much and felt forced to be less, which is exactly how the online trolls and the women made her feel during her time filming the Netflix special.
“Girls and women can be so mean especially when you’re confident in yourself and when you see someone so confident at a young age, you just want to destroy them,” she says emotionally.
But upon arrival, it was anything but the sort.
Palkovic also explained how, in scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor, she and Perez’s filming co-stars got ready for filming together.
“If anything brings women together, it’s getting ready,” she declares.
At the time of filming, she danced professionally at a nightclub and brought makeup from work to share with the other women and bond over but says sadly it didn’t help her bond with the other girls.
Palkovic was so excited about the 80’s party and chatted about outfits with the women.
“A lot of wounds that I healed as a kid were reopened,” she says as she recounts the evening.
“There was one specific woman on the show who could not stop talking when we were filming about the fact she was so excited to get a million followers, so she didn’t have to work anymore,” she claims.
She saw her soon after at a sports game and says the same woman kept mentioning that she hit one million followers.
Because of this and other things she saw, Palkovic claims that she doesn’t think anyone on Love is Blind Season 2 was really ready for a relationship, besides Perez, and believes they actually went on the reality show for attention and brand endorsements.
Palkovic also reveals in this interview that she was previously married, and was left with low self-esteem following the aftermath of her divorce.
After finding self-love for herself again following that ordeal, she says her relationship with Perez actually helped her heal from past trauma that only resurfaced following the fallout from the show.
“I trusted him the second I saw him and I never felt so safe, and he just beams love. That is something I have needed my whole life, and he really is my best friend,” she says tearfully.
The couple both stayed up and watched the premiere of After the Altar Season 2 at 2 a.m. and honestly thought the show depicted them well.
It wasn’t until the next day, that she realized she was receiving so much hate online, which ultimately led to her Instagram account being deactivated two days later due to a pile-on from trolls, who all reported her account out of spite.
She tearfully shared that it hurt her to have people come at her and try to take down her “art” on a public social platform just because she exists.
“[After the show aired], it just really put me in a really bad place,” she confesses.
Thankfully, her loving partner was there to ride the waves of trauma right by her side.
‘I was on the floor crying’
“The day after the show came out I was on the floor crying,” she says.
She says that Perez just sat silently next to her for hours, as she sobbed over the stress from the show airing and her own sad feelings.
He gave her the time and space to cry and just laid down next to her.
“I never had a partner show up for me like that,” she shares.
Many of the trolls bombarded her DMs and comment section of her Instagram with negative messages.
She says she was called a paid actor, a clout chaser, a sex worker, and other names.
When asked why she thinks she was targeted so harshly by online trolls, Palkovic suggests that it has to do with her OnlyFans career and unique lifestyle, which she is very proud of.
One comment, in particular, affected her deeply because they wrote that the reason she was an OnlyFans creator was that “she doesn’t get enough gigs as a dancer and no one wants to hear her sing.”
“This one was the one that hurt the most because this person has no idea how hard I’ve worked, what I’ve sacrificed, to be at the point in my career where I am today, where I literally get to pick and choose whatever shows I want to do,” she explains.
Palkovic is very proud of her career and is in the top 0.1% of creators on the platform.
“The only reason I started my OnlyFans was because I had been a performer for my whole life. I thought I wanted to be on Broadway, but I enjoyed doing my own creative projects and needed money to make things good,” she explains.
The professional dancer says she now makes a ton of money sharing confidence tips, dance videos, and other content on OnlyFans.
“I’m really excited for what’s to come for me,” she confidently states.
Since the show aired, the couple has never been more solid and is even more driven to pursue these separate goals.
Palkovic says she is putting out an album in January 2023, after putting her music release on hold due to the backlash from the show.
The relationship story of Sal Perez and Jessi Palkovic may have had an unconventional start, but they say they are in it for the long haul.
“I’m not sorry that we met each other and fell in love,” she declares happily. “He is my home.”
The U.S. Sun reached out to Netflix for a comment but has yet to hear back.