Chris Harrison telling Clare Crawley that she has “blown up The Bachelorette” will echo through the minds of Bachelor Nation for months to come as the ABC reality dating series’ explosive 16th season plays out — but the hairstylist apparently has more in store than viewers realize.
“It’s one of those [situations] where I’ve heard some of the rumors, and I’m like, ‘Let them spin out, let them spin around’ because there’s so much that happens,” Crawley, 39, said on the Wednesday, October 14, episode of the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast with Rachel Lindsay and Becca Kufrin. “I’m like, ‘I can’t believe that didn’t get out’ or ‘I can’t believe that didn’t get out.’ … People think that they know what’s going on.”
The Sacramento, California, native’s journey was wild from the start. Days after she was announced as the next Bachelorette in March, production was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She finally began filming in July, only to leave the show within the first two weeks after finding love with one of her suitors. Us Weekly broke the news in August that Tayshia Adams then stepped in to complete the season.
While Crawley and ABC have remained tight-lipped about the switch-up — she refused to confirm the news on Good Morning America ahead of the Tuesday, October 13, premiere — she has teased that viewers are in for a wild ride.
“I said what I wanted to say. I did what I wanted to do. I followed my heart. I followed my gut,” she told Lindsay, 35, and Kufrin, 30, on Wednesday. “I didn’t let anybody tell me what to do because I know what’s best for myself. And that’s why I can literally look back and say I have no regrets because I wasn’t talked into or even encouraged to do something that I didn’t want to do. And I think that goes far in the world of The Bachelor because in the past, I think, people always wondered, like, ‘Did producers make you do this? Or did that say that? Or did they encourage this?’ But never once did I do something that I didn’t want to do, and this was, I guess, the season to do things my way.”
During Tuesday’s season premiere, Crawley gave her first impression rose to Dale Moss after saying under her breath that she felt like she “just met [her] husband.”
“It was breathtaking,” the Bachelor alum exclusively told Us on Tuesday of her first time meeting the former football player, 32. “It was one of those moments where you don’t know it until you experience it, what exactly that feeling is. … It just takes your breath away.”
The Bachelorette airs on ABC Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
