Breaking it all down. During the Monday, January 6, premiere of season 24 of The Bachelor, Hannah Brown not only showed up on the first night of filming but then returned a few days later to host a group date.
Emotions were running high between Brown, 25, and Peter Weber — as well as all of his contestants who were a bit put off by his ex-girlfriend showing up not once, but twice. While the episode ended with the former Bachelorette considering whether to stay on the show, it’s safe to say that does not happen. She happened to also be competing at the time on another ABC competition show: Dancing With the Stars.
So, how do the timelines add up? Night one of The Bachelor was filmed on September 19, three days after the Dancing With the Stars premiere, in which Brown and partner Alan Bersten made their ballroom debut.
Later during The Bachelor premiere, the Alabama native returns to host a group date and ends up breaking down in tears backstage. She reveals to Weber that she regrets choosing Jed Wyatt during her season and knew there was still something between them when she saw him at the live after-show in July. When the pilot asks if she’d consider joining the season, she answers, “Maybe.”
So, when was that filmed? Well, when he walks into the backstage area he calls her “birthday girl.” Brown turned 25 on September 24, which fell on a Tuesday — just one day after week two of Dancing With the Stars aired.
The former Miss Alabama opened up about her birthday week in a blog for Bustle during her time on Dancing With the Stars.
“This past year has been crazy — my week has been insane, and my schedule is something I can’t even catch up with,” she wrote on September 24. “This day has been really difficult on a deeper level. There are a lot of unknowns when you start the next year of your life, and it’s kind of scary for me in that way. Will 25 be more of the same, exciting, scary, emotional things in my life? Or is everything going to slow down, and if so, in what way, and is that a good thing or a bad thing? Because if there’s nothing here for me anymore, then what next? Because I don’t want to go back home, either. Ultimately, I’m just tired.”
On the following day, she revealed she was extremely “emotional” in rehearsals. “I think what it’s coming down to is I feel like I’ve made a lot of decisions that I shouldn’t have trusted in the past year. That’s the raincloud over all this. Because of that, it’s manifesting in dance,” Brown wrote. “I don’t trust myself to just take a step. I don’t trust myself to make decisions right now, because a lot of the decisions I made the past year, were they the best? I don’t know. I was having that a-ha moment that trust is not something that I really have right now, at all. For other people, or for myself. It was a heavy day.”
The rest of her blogs for that week were a bit somber as well, even though her friends were in town visiting. “My friends know I’m not exactly OK, and I could see the concern in their eyes,” the reality star wrote on September 26. “I’m really just trying to hold it together in terms of being stressed and needing a lot of me-time that I don’t necessarily get. I’m still kind of lonely, too. I don’t feel like I have anybody I can talk to about what I’m going through.”
Though it hasn’t been confirmed that Brown was with Weber on her actual birthday, it seems likely that the emotional rollercoaster lines up. However, if you didn’t watch Dancing With the Stars and don’t know what happens … well, she continued to compete week after week, worked really hard and ultimately, took home the mirrorball trophy.
So it’s safe to assume Brown did not join Weber’s season.
The Bachelor airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
