If she could turn back time? Bibiana Julian got candid about her Bachelor Nation past during a game of Us Weekly’s “Bachelor Regrets,” admitting she wished she pursued Joe Amabile during season 5 of Bachelor in Paradise.
“My only regret with Paradise, honestly, I was thinking about it today, my first [time on] Paradise, I slept on Grocery Store Joe. I totally slept on him,” Bibiana, 33, recently dished on Us’ “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast.
Joe, 34, ultimately left the 2018 season of BiP with Kendall Long, but the twosome went their separate ways in February 2020. The Chicago native is set to look for love in Mexico again when season 7 of the spinoff premieres next month.
Bibiana, for her part, told Us that she wasn’t surprised when she learned Joe was back on the beach. “I talked to him prior, and it was something that, obviously, they were already talking to him about. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision for him, like, ‘Do I do this again? Do I not?’” she said. “But you know, he’s back in the mix. He’s on ‘Click Bait.’ He’s single. … If things don’t work out with him on Paradise, he would be a Bachelor pick for me too.”
Fans met Bibiana on Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s season of The Bachelor in 2018. While she once dissed the former race car driver, 39, and expressed her disappointment that he wasn’t more like season 20 Bachelor Ben Higgins, she told Us that she regrets that sentiment.
“I think everybody does the best that they can. I don’t know if I actually still agree with that 100 percent just because now Arie is a father of three and very happy,” Bibiana said, referring to Arie and wife Lauren Burnham’s daughter Alessi, 2, and twins Senna and Lux, 1 month. “They have these beautiful homes and I love following Lauren on Instagram. … They just look so happy for one another, and I get that Instagram isn’t everything, but I’m really happy to have been part of a season where it’s like, ‘Oh, this actually worked for someone,’ because those are the exceptions. It’s not the rule.”
Bibiana went on to appear on seasons 5 and 6 of BiP and Bachelor Winter Games.
“They all just kind of give me a little bit of PTSD inside. I’m just like, ‘Oh, who was I?” she told Us when asked to rank her experiences. “Maybe Winter Games might have been my best experience because I really liked Jordan [Mauger]. I think back to how giddy I was. I often wonder, like, if somebody like that was a lead, I wonder how it would have felt to have a relationship progress on a regular Bachelor season. The least [favorite] 100 percent has to be Bachelor 22 just because I wasn’t there for a long time.”
She concluded: “So my favorite was Winter Games because I made it the farthest, I felt the most for someone, I had a connection and then … my first Bachelor in Paradise, second Bachelor in Paradise and then Bachelor 22 with Arie.”
