Love Is Blind fans remember Shake Chatterjee as the guy who asked women in the pods whether they work out and if he could lift them. Then, perhaps unsurprisingly, his fiancée Deepti Vempati left him at the altar, but Shake didn’t mind because he still had a reservation at Nobu to look forward to.
Now, thanks to his Love Is Blind reputation, the reality star is seeking redemption on E!’s House of Villains — precisely because he doesn’t actually see himself as a villain.
“I felt misunderstood,” Chatterjee, 36, tells why he wanted to join the series. “I wanted to win the money, but also a part of it was just showing a different side of myself that didn’t really get shown at all on Love Is Blind. I’m a veterinarian, which is a big part of my life, but Love Is Blind glossed over that empathetic, soft, caring side of me, completely, on purpose, to prove their point. So I’m like, ‘Huh, maybe this villain show will show how nice and wonderful I am.’”
That said, Chatterjee does admit that House of Villains “brought out the villainous side of me in a lot of ways.”
“I won’t say I’m as resistant to the villain title now,” he continues. “To me, it wasn’t House of Villains, it was School of Villains. Because I went in there just being myself and I’m like, ‘Oh, wait, no, this isn’t working. I’m going to get destroyed if I just go in there with this attitude.’ I had to learn very quickly from the best villains in the game how to survive in that environment. And through that, I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m a villain too,’ when I need to be a villain, anyway.”
Chatterjee confesses he didn’t recognize most of his House of Villains castmates, who include The Challenge star Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio (The Challenge), legend Jonny Fairplay (), The Bachelor alum Corinne Olympios, The Apprentice’s Omarosa Manigault Newman, Flavor of Love standout Tiffany “New York” Pollard and Vanderpump Rules’ Jax Taylor.
“I am not a big reality TV person,” he explains. “Johnny Bananas, I’ve heard of him the most. I won’t say that I’m familiar with his work as much, and I wish I was, because now looking back, I’m like, ‘Man, I could have probably seen through some of this stuff that was going on.’ But I know how big of a deal he is.”
The Netflix star believes that his castmates who came from competition shows, like Devenanzio, 41, and Fairplay, 49, had an advantage when it came to this game.
“They would pick up on things right away,” Chatterjee says. “Things that would have gone completely over my head, they were the first to catch on.”
Fairplay actually helped Chatterjee out a little when it came to the competitive elements of the show.
“Both Bananas and Fairplay were picking up on this stuff, but Fairplay was the one who would fill me in,” Chatterjee says. “Bananas kept some things to himself. He shared them when it was ready, but Fairplay, he was like, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m thankful that at least for now, you and I are buddies.’ Sometimes that changes as the show goes on. You’re friends and then all of a sudden…”
Such was the case for Chatterjee and 44-year-old Taylor, who — as the House of Villains trailer teased — butted heads throughout the season.
“Things were OK in the very, very beginning,” says Chatterjee, who now lives in Miami and started working as a loan officer in addition to his job as a vet. “But the nature of the show is, we’re competing with each other. This show almost forces you to do some sneaking around and some backstabbing.”
Chatterjee says he and Taylor “were put into a situation where we’re competing pretty early, and I knew I had to get an edge on him, so I did whatever I felt I had to do.”
As a result, “he reacted a certain way,” Chatterjee says of the Bravo star. “Jax and I didn’t get along with very well, but his reputation speaks for itself. It’s going to be very entertaining to watch.”
Chatterjee can’t say how the competition played out, but at the end of the day, he feels “honored to be included with these guys.”
He says, “Just to be in the same house with them, that was enough for me. I was excited by that. I didn’t even care if it was a negative impression, to be quite honest with you, because — I don’t know — I never thought I’d be doing this stuff in the first place. So if I’m on their radar, then I’m flattered, even if it’s bad attention.”
House of Villains premieres Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on E!
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