Telling his side. Blake Horstmann said he was “breathing into a paper bag” after releasing intimate texts between him and Caelynn Miller-Keyes from the 2019 Stagecoach Festival in April.
In an upcoming episode of the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast, the season 22 Bachelorette runner-up, 30, told cohosts Rachel Lindsay and Ali Fedotowsky about the difficult decision that led him to post explicit texts between him and the former Miss North Carolina, 24, on his Instagram account in August.
“Caelynn, you know, she used the word ‘premeditated.’ And premeditated is just a fancy way of saying, ‘I thought really hard about it’ because I did,” Blake said in a preview of the Wednesday, September 25, episode obtained by Entertainment Tonight.
He continued, “It was such a hard decision for me. That night, when I released those text messages, I was breathing into a paper bag. It was incredibly difficult for me.”
The sales rep also denied claims that Bachelor Nation members, such as Dean Unglert and Nick Viall, warned him to not release the texts.
“A lot of people, they didn’t even really say, ‘No, don’t do it.’ They were like ‘If you do it, know what the consequences are’ … and there were a few that were like, ‘The things she’s saying, you have to do it. I don’t see any other choice,'” Blake said. “I wanted to see if anybody else had any other ideas. I wanted to see if there was any other avenue I could take. And at the end of the day, as hard as it was, I felt like that was the only thing I could do to get my truth out there.”
Blake’s drama with Caelynn started on the season 6 premiere of Bachelor in Paradise in August, where the Miss USA 2018 runner-up claimed that the Bachelorette alum had slept with her and Kristina Schulman on back-to-back nights during the Stagecoach Festival. Caelynn told other Paradise cast members that Blake tried to “silence” her by telling her to keep quiet about their affair.
In an attempt to clear his name, Blake took to his Instagram Stories after the episode to post texts between him and Caelynn from the night they had sex. He deleted the texts hours later after he saw that Caelynn was being attacked for the content of the messages.
“I NEVER ghosted Caelynn, I NEVER called her a mistake and I absolutely NEVER EVER EVER silenced Caelynn,” he wrote in August. “I never expected to have to do something like this, but after finally seeing the episodes I feel like I have no choice but to release the text exchanges between her and myself. This is the last thing I wanted to do, but my name and character are being attacked. My name is all I really have.”
During the Paradise finale on Tuesday, September 17, the pair faced off over the drama, and Caelynn tearfully told Blake that he did left her feeling “exposed” and “violated.”
“I truly feel disgusting that everyone has seen that s–t. That to me is the lowest of the low,” she said.
In his “Bachelor Happy Hour” interview, Blake claimed that he wouldn’t have released the texts and would have sorted out his drama with Caelynn on Paradise if he had known that she felt “silenced” by him.
“Had I known that she said I was silencing her and all of these things, I would have addressed it on the beach with her,” he said. “But I had no idea she was saying those things. And so when I watched it, I was shook. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe she was saying the things she was saying.”
The reality star explained that he deleted the texts after coming to his senses and realizing how they may have hurt Caelynn.
“One of the reasons I deleted the text messages was I was having a complete breakdown. I was breathing into a paper bag. All of a sudden, I took a step back [and] I was like, ‘Caelynn’s feeling this way probably.’ And that killed me,” he said. “I was like, ‘What I’m feeling right now?’ I just [hurt] somebody else, and that hurt, and that sucked.
He added, “I am sorry that it hurt her the way it did. I wish it didn’t come to that.”
In the end, Blake learned an important lesson from the scandal, which is who his true friends are from Bachelor Nation.
“Sometimes Bachelor Nation, they’ll say things privately. [But] in public, they aren’t there for you,” he said. “Real fast, I found out who my real friends are, and I won’t forget.”
