On the Netflix show, Henderson (Ngāruahine) connected with Ashley Carpenter. They dumped each other at the altar, and later, at this week’s reunion special, she accused him of being “fake”.
Hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey remarked on “a lot of gaps” in story timelines and a lack of vulnerability.
Alex Henderson. Photo / Netflix
Is Henderson as shady as he came across to some on TV? Or did he get a “villain” edit?
It’s been nearly a year since filming ended. The 32-year-old has “moved on in the best of ways”.
Henderson is Chicago-born, Ohio-raised and Māori. His biological father is from New Zealand and not present in his life, and his mother is American. Across his arm and chest is the tā moko he received while in Auckland after reaching out to artist Gordon Toi.
“I had wanted to get tā moko to celebrate my heritage, my journey, to reconnect with my people,” Henderson says.
Job titles on the show label Henderson as a soccer coach. No, wait, he’s in financial sales. Actually, he’s a day trader. It’s all “very, very complicated”, Henderson admits.
To viewers still confused, he says this: his career as a professional soccer player in North Carolina ended after knee surgeries, which led him to work in finance in Denver, Colorado, and later into external mutual fund wholesaling – until Covid shut that down.
He got a severance package from Columbia Threadneedle Investments – he was paid a full year’s salary, plus a bonus. He travelled free with United Airlines as a benefit through his mum, who had worked there.
Later, he moved to Nhulunbuy in Australia’s Northern Territory and then Melbourne, made easy because of his New Zealand passport.
On Love Is Blind, Henderson, who now lives in Arizona (“still nomadic”), and Carpenter struggled, which led to a mutual “no” at their wedding. The answer was never a surprise. The delivery was.
According to Henderson, the pair had a short, respectfulconversation hours before the wedding about their decision, so that no one would be blindsided and they could both get closure.
It was ‘I don’t’ for Ashley Carpenter and Alex Henderson. Photo / Netflix
At the altar though, Carpenter gave a speech Henderson wasn’t expecting, and questioning his integrity.
What was going through his mind?
“It went straight into, ‘okay, I disagree with what you’re saying here. Where are you trying to come from? And what are you really trying to say here?’.”
Despite making a decision beforehand, Henderson said he went through with the filmed wedding because he was trying to “give my full self to the experiment”.
“In any good experiment, you can’t predetermine the outcome, and in order to take those results forward as proof, I think you have to go all the way through.”
The show and the production also plays a hand.
“We always encourage couples not to make a decision before the wedding,” Vanessa Lachey said at the reunion.
“You truly don’t know for certain how you feel until you are standing at the altar before all of your family and friends.”
The cracks appeared at the wedding in less obvious ways too. For a slick Netflix production, Henderson had noticeable bits of fluff on his face and clothes at the altar. The beard was also thicker. Commenters online pointed to a lack of effort. Then it became a meme.
Was he mad at the producers for not warning him about fluff and fuzz?
“No,” Henderson says. “It’s funny, some of that was protecting my future wife in a weird way.”
He revealed he hadn’t walked his mum down the aisle (not shown on camera), and hadn’t gone to the barber, shaved, or fixed his suit “on purpose”.
“I know that my future wife will want a wedding that is a little bit different, that’s just for her … I am going to look correct for [her], because [that] is the right woman that I want to marry.”
The fuzz, however, “that’s an accident”. He laughs.
There’s a moment in the show when Henderson is talking about his plans over the next five years. It involved a “potential trust in Dubai and a safehouse in Queenstown, New Zealand”.
Alex Henderson has ambitious plans. Photo / Varsha Anjali
So New Zealand is earning another rich doomsday prepper?
“I don’t want a billionaire bunker in New Zealand,” Henderson clarifies quickly.
“In America, there’s a lot of stuff going on at all times, so I think it’s very cool to have all the passports set up and have a place that I can go to that’s free and take my family to that’s seemingly safe. I like New Zealand in general, I look at [buying property] as a safehouse there,“ he says.
“But it’s not a billionaire bunker that I’m trying to avoid nuclear holocaust with, I promise.”
Henderson is currently single. After going through the Love Is Blind experience and watching himself on screen, he says he’s learned he should be “proactive”.
“In future relationships … if there are issues or trigger points [about the] past and on my timeline, [I would] pull her aside and say, ‘hey, let’s go through this together and figure this out, because obviously this is an issue for you.’”
He’s also learned a lot about what he wants in a partner – and it’s not just someone with darker physical features, as was suggested on the show.
“Everyone thinks that it was just a physical thing with Ashley, that it was the only inhibitor. One thing she taught me to look for in my next wife or woman … is somebody that will stand by you publicly, even when you’re wrong,” he says.
“That being accepted, and then reciprocating, is a pretty big deal to me.”
Varsha Anjali is a journalist in the lifestyle team at the Herald. She is based in Auckland.