Social media users are looking back on the time Ian Somerhalder candidly revealed he once got rid of his wife Nikki Reed’s birth control pills.
Back in 2017, Ian, now 45, and Nikki, 35, made a joint appearance on Dr. Berlin’s Informed Pregnancy Podcast, where they opened up about deciding to have children together. However, things got controversial when Ian revealed that he threw out Nikki’s birth control pills while they were on vacation in Spain.
“We decided that we wanted to have children together, and it was just time. But unbeknownst to poor Nikki, she didn’t realize that I was going to go in her purse and take out her birth control,” he candidly shared.
“By the way, it was the beginning of the pack, so I had to pop all those suckers out. It is a lot of work, especially after a little bit of sangria,” he went on, adding that he even filmed himself throwing out the pills.
The couple laughed about the entire thing on the podcast, and Ian went on to note that he and Nikki had had discussions about having children before he got rid of her pills. He then added, “Actually, now thinking about it, I guess I kind of decided [to start a family].”
As perhaps expected, Ian’s comments sparked heavy backlash online. In fact, Nikki ended up entering the conversation to defend him and vehemently denied that he’d tried to “force” her into pregnancy.
A couple of days later, Nikki and Ian issued a joint apology to “anyone who has been affected by reproductive coercion,” noting that it is an “extremely serious issue.”
“We never expected a lighthearted interview we did poking fun at EACH OTHER and how WE chose together to get pregnant [...] to turn into something representing a very serious matter,” they wrote. “However, if this somehow sheds light on a topic that definitely needs mainstream attention, then we are grateful for the unintended consequence.”
Fast-forward to this week, and this controversy resurfaced online after Ian and Nikki made a couple of joint TikTok appearances, prompting some X (formerly known as Twitter) users to look back on what went down.
