The “other man” who helped destroy a marriage on national TV – getting his ex to admit to 8 million viewers that she’d rather be married to him than her hubby – is “sick” over his role in the scandal and says he made a mistake appearing on the show.
“I really just want all of this to be over,” Frank Nardi Jr. wrote in an e-mail to The Post yesterday about his stomach-churning appearance on the lie-detector reality show “Moment of Truth” Monday.
The fledgling New York actor, who goes by the online nickname “Nardiballs,” also wrote on his MySpace.com page yesterday: “This whole experience was a mistake . . . I haven’t been this sick ever in my life.
“It wasn’t my intention to go out and ruin a marriage.”
But that’s what happened when Nardi, 25, turned up as a surprise guest on the controversial Fox show where his one-time gal pal, Lauren Cleri, 26, made viewers squirm after admitting she’d cheated on her husband.
She then dropped a stunner, confessing she wishes she’d married Nardi instead of her hubby of two years, NYPD rookie cop Frank Cleri, 24.
“I thought it was gonna be fun when the producers from the show invited me out to LA,” Nardi wrote on his blog.
“Quite the contrary . . . It was supposed to be a surprise, a good surprise, but unfortunately it backfired right in my face.”
“As we all know the show was nuts,” added Nardi, who has been labeled on several TV message boards as a homewrecker.
I’m sorry I ever did it.”
Before his small-screen debut, Nardi – who has appeared in the Philadelphia production of the off-Broadway hit “Tony & Tina’s Wedding” and attends acting classes at Manhattan’s William Esper Studio – touted his prime-time appearance to his online friends, and urged them to watch the show.
Lauren Cleri, a New York salon worker and aspiring actress, and Nardi were classmates at New Jersey’s Pennsauken HS, where he was president of the drama club.
They dated before she wed Cleri in 2006.
As the cameras rolled and a visibly shaken Frank Cleri cringed, Nardi boldly asked Lauren: “Do you believe I am the man you should be married to?”
She answered “yes” – and racked up $100,000 when the lie-detector results said she was telling the truth, but wound up with nothing when the machine rejected her answer that she was a good person.
jeane.macintosh@nypost.com