After helping Sydney Gordon secure a spot on season 28 of The Bachelor, Ashley Iaconetti is coming to her defense following the tense Monday, February 5, episode of the ABC series.
“Please be kind to our friend,” Ashley, 35, wrote alongside a selfie with Sydney, 28, and fellow Bachelor alum Jill Chin via Instagram Stories. “Sometimes you just have to have been there to understand why people made the moves they did.”
Ashley and husband Jared Haibon, who wed in 2019, work with Sydney in Rhode Island on their social media pages. They previously teased to Us Weekly that Sydney could be at odds with the women competing for Joey Graziadei‘s affections.
“She will play a role,” Ashley told Us last month, with Jared, 35, adding that “she’ll be featured.”
Ashely continued: “We have no idea what her story line’s going to look like because we’ve heard the story.”
The arc started playing out during week 2 when Sydney informed Madina that Maria had made comments about her in the mansion. While Madina, 31, and Maria, 29, have (kind of) moved on from the argument over Maria allegedly belittling Madina’s insecurities about being the oldest woman on the show, Sydney is now in the hot seat for bringing up the drama to Joey and claiming Maria “verbally attacked her” and called her “embarrassing, weird and dumb,” which Maria denied.
“We hear Sydney say that she’s called her weird … stupid and embarrassing, and then there were a couple other things that I’ve heard that she’s called her but it did not make air,” Ashley told Ben Higgins on their “Almost Famous” podcast after Monday’s episode aired. “You’d have to think that Sydney is making that up, that she totally made that up out of thin air and told Joey about that so she’s a liar, or you can think that you just didn’t see her saying that on TV. But I think because there is — seemingly — this is all an argument over nothing and it certainly is not just about Madina and the old comment, let’s just forget about that, that does not exist in my mind, barely during this episode. I think there’s a lot of context missing, and that’s what I’ll say.”
She added: “I’m not using it as an excuse because I’m saying based on what I see on TV, it seems like an argument about nothing. And I’m sure it’s not an argument about nothing.”
Ben, however, wasn’t convinced.
“I see somebody obsessed with causing conflict with Maria for whatever reason — whatever we’re seeing, not seeing, experiencing or not. … [Sydney] is beautiful. She is confident. Obviously, you said it, so I have to trust you. She’s cool. She’s got so much going on,” he said. “[So], Sydney, what are you doing? Give it up.”
For a complete recap of week 3 of Joey’s season, listen to Us Weekly‘s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast.
