Following her heart. Hannah Ann Sluss admitted she wouldn’t have felt “ready” to take on the role of Bachelorette this season after ending her engagement to Peter Weber.
The Tennessee native, 23, opened up about her experience on season 24 of The Bachelor, which concluded with her breaking up with the pilot, 28, during the live After the Final Rose special. While the new Bachelorette had already been revealed before Sluss’ time on the series came to an end, the model wasn’t too upset that it was Clare Crawley who was given another chance to find love instead of her.
“I am not ready for that,” she told Nick Viall during the Wednesday, March 25, episode of his “Viall Files” podcast. “I’ve moved on but also, it’s different. Right now, dating, no one knows about it, it’s private. But to be dating publicly again … that’s a huge responsibility. If I were to ever do that I’d want to be just so emotionally and mentally strong, to where I could take that on. Putting myself in Peter’s shoes, that was a big responsibility.”
Viall, 39, knows all about working through public heartbreak after having been runner up on two consecutive seasons of The Bachelorette in 2014 and 2015. He later made another attempt at finding The One on Bachelor in Paradise, and was announced as the season 21 lead of the Bachelor in 2016. The longtime Bachelor Nation member pressed Sluss further, surprised that she would have said no to another shot at finding her soulmate.
“I just got engaged, you know, I was very — in my mind and heart, I was already thinking in the future for us,” Sluss clarified, describing the potential she saw for her relationship with Weber. “So it’s like, losing the person I thought he was and losing the future thought I had. That takes some time to get back on your feet. Which I have. I wanna date just one right person now.”
Though she may not feel like her heart has fully healed just yet, the former beauty pageant competitor admitted that she wouldn’t “close the door” to appearing on Bachelor in Paradise this summer if given the opportunity.
“I’ll see closer to the time,” she told Viall. “I want to make sure I’m ready.”
