In an April 28 interview with E! News, Ian Somerhalder opened up about the eight-figure debt he was in.
“I retired from acting seven years ago,” the Lost actor said. “I left an insanely lucrative career in television after financial upheaval from building a business that I didn’t build properly. And due to fraud, it put my wife and I into an eight-figure hole.”
He continued, “Eight figures is a hard hole to climb out of. But Nikki and I did it. You know, she really negotiated us out of this deal but we sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything.”
Back in 2021, he also spoke about his debt in a post on his Instagram. “I owe you such gratitude for it all,” he said, speaking about his wife. “What many of you may not know is this woman is the reason I was actually able to build Brother's Bond Bourbon. I’ve never disclosed this publicly, but this woman worked selflessly for 2yrs to build me out of a terrible business situation I got myself into. Before Nik and I got together I built a company while shooting TVD that was important to me. I invested heavily, I made huge personal guarantees to banks. However due to greed and fraud within that company and fraudulent activities from our biggest customer, not to mention the temporary collapse of the oil and gas industry - I was left in an EIGHT- FIGURE hole. It was awful. A true nightmare day in and day out.”
He continued, “I was able to start my life over because of this woman. Needless to say it’s been the most eye opening and truly humbling experience. Painful as hell but as a family SHE got us through. It’s unreal. I owe her my health, my life and my sanity.”
