Vanessa didn’t come to The Ultimatum: Queer Love to be hated.

“When people watch reality shows, it’s very much like, ‘This is the chosen villain. We all hate her,’ ” Vanessa tells Tudum. “And everyone watching is like, ‘Oh my god, she’s awful.’ I don’t think people take time to sit back and be like, ‘Why do I think she’s awful? Did she actually do something that was awful, or is it just everyone saying she’s awful?” 

The answer to that question will likely depend on who you’re talking to — but in order to understand why Vanessa is even up for villain consideration, you have to reflect back on her behavior in the first four episodes. Like everyone else in the Queer Love cast, she was given an ultimatum by her partner, Xander: Marry me, or we’re breaking up. Afterward, everyone chooses a trial marriage partner to test the strength of their conviction and love. 

In the first moments of the show, Vanessa comes across as completely open-minded to discover whatever the experiment holds, saying she’s “very excited to meet new people.”

“People fall in love with me pretty easily,” she says in Episode 1. “Game on.”

Looking back, though, Vanessa says she wasn’t necessarily as prepared as she thought she was. 

“Going in, my initial mindset was excitement,” Vanessa tells Tudum. “I hadn’t had a queer community around me at that point in my life, and Xander was my first homosexual relationship. I was so excited at the concept of being with nine other queer people and getting to know them. I was just excited… and that quickly changed.”

Vanessa and Xander were together for four years before Xander issued Vanessa the ultimatum. 

The first sign of trouble for Vanessa comes at the halfway point of Episode 2. At that point, Vanessa had dates with both Rae and Lexi, who came to the show as a couple with Lexi issuing the ultimatum. Vanessa says she had a great time with both of them — Rae, she says, was a calming presence to counteract her naturally chaotic energy, while Lexi was someone she thought could match her energy and have a lot of fun.

But shortly after her date with Rae, Vanessa meets up with Lexi on a park bench — and that’s where things start to go left. The conversation is somewhat head-spinning, but here’s a quick synopsis: Lexi asks Vanessa if she could see see herself getting married; Vanessa says she can’t see herself marrying anyone and that Xander is the closest she’s ever come to envisioning marriage. Lexi then asks Vanessa if she’s worried Xander will find someone else during the experiment. Vanessa says a flat no, describes herself as beautiful, then floats the idea that, actually, Xander would be asexual if not for her. Lexi’s negative reaction is visceral.

“What exactly did you think you were going to get out of this process if there was no chance for Xander to be with other people?” Lexi asks. “What the fuck did you come here for? You’re not risking anything.”

Vanessa’s reaction on the show is nothing short of dumbfounded, and she says even now she doesn’t really understand Lexi’s response. 

“I will never understand [what happened]. We walked into that date, she put her jacket around me, she brought me a tampon because I was on my period. She was holding my arm, I was fake dancing, then we sit down and I tell her, ‘I’m having a really hard time. I never expected my partner to just fall for someone. It’s really hitting me hard, and I know I’m going to have a hard time.’ And then she just truly flipped out on me.”

It seems like Lexi’s reaction is largely due to Vanessa’s dismissal of the idea of Xander potentially meeting someone else, her lack of good intentions and not being there for “the right reasons.” 

Vanessa has a different perspective. 

“My take on it was that perhaps Lexi thought she and I would be trial marriage partners,” she says. “I had a really good date with Rae beforehand, so I knew going into that date with Lexi [knowing I wasn’t choosing her],” Vanessa says. “I think that threw her off and maybe made her angry.”

Vanessa says that despite her low points on the show, she brought her authentic self to the experience. 

Whatever the interpretation of that conversation on the bench, one thing is certain: It sets off a sequence of events that seems to solidify Vanessa as the villain of The Ultimatum: Queer Love. Afterwards, Lexi speaks to the camera and says Vanessa is “fake” and “like Voldemort.” She talks to other members of the cast, including her ex, Rae, about Vanessa’s ill intentions, even calling her “calculated” in a later episode.

“She said so many hurtful things to me,” Vanessa says. “But Lexi didn’t know me. Lexi and I had probably four dates. I liked her a lot, I really did… but I just knew our energies were not going to match for a trial marriage.”

Ultimately, Vanessa says that Lexi’s change of heart also had implications for her with the rest of the cast. In the second episode of the series, the entire cast gathers to discuss their dates and make a choice — by that point, Vanessa says, people’s opinions of her had been formed. 

“I felt singled out and attacked by a group,” Vanessa says. “But that’s just my own personal opinion because I love myself, and I know how I was feeling in those moments. But absolutely, I have some villain moments.”

Perhaps her most memorable self-professed villain moment is one that happens between her and Xander. After plenty of tense conversation between Vanessa and the rest of the cast, Xander reveals during a group dinner that she had a girlfriend Vanessa didn’t know about. Along with everything else, Vanessa says, it was just too much.

“We had been in a relationship for four years, living together, traveling the world together. I thought I knew everything about her, and then she casually drops this information about someone she dated. And I’m like, ‘Well, who is it? Is there someone from her past that I don’t even know about, and why don’t I know about them, and why isn’t she telling me about them now?’ ” 

Vanessa says that whether or not you think she’s the villain on The Ultimatum: Queer Love, what happened next wasn’t her finest moment. 

“I said ‘fuck off’ to the person I love,” she admits. “I totally get that people will be put off by that.”