Valentine’s Day in Paradise? DeMario Jackson revealed he is spending the holiday with former Bachelor in Paradise costar Corinne Olympios after last season’s sexual misconduct scandal.
“You know what’s funny? We actually are going out for Valentine’s Day – as friends, as friends,” Jackson told fellow Bachelor Nation member, Eric Bigger, on the Wednesday, February 14, episode of his podcast Bigger Talks With Eric Bigger. “I can’t wait for tonight, just for the fact that — you know, we’re homies.“
“We’re really good friends, and you know, we just enjoy each other’s company and we like to take things slow. I feel like the last couple of months, it’s been a lot of pressure for us to be something or this or that,” Jackson continued. “But at the end of the day, you know, it’s her and I. We hang out. We have fun, and you know, that’s it. And a year from now, you never know, but for right now, you know, we’re strictly friends … I told her, like after the Jay-Z concert — you know, I was a little drunk — and I basically told her, you know, I was like, ‘Look, like I’m into you, you’re into me, but I don’t want to half-ass do anything.’”
As previously reported, ABC shut down the production of Bachelor in Paradise in June 2017 after a producer filed a report of alleged sexual misconduct on the set. It was later revealed that the complaint was about a hookup that happened between Jackson and Olympios. During a two-week production shutdown, Warner Brothers investigated the report and found no evidence of misconduct. The Bachelor spinoff resumed filming, but Jackson and Olympios did not return to Mexico.
The pair made headlines after the scandal when they posed for PDA-filled photos the following August and September. The romance rumors continued as they arrived at an L.A. Halloween party together. However, both Jackson and Olympios have always insisted that they are just friends.
“We’re extremely close. We talk, like, every day. We hang out. We do things that friends do,” Jackson exclusively told Us Weekly in October, adding that Olympios is “the most drop dead gorgeous girl in the world.”
Olympics echoed Jackson’s statements at the time: “We’re really good friends and just hang out a lot and I’m super happy to be here with him tonight. It’s really good that we could just be friends and have no worries about any drama or anything like that.”
