Bachelor Nation is days away from finding out how Joey Graziadei‘s season of The Bachelor ends — and he’s ready for the world to know whether he gave out the final rose.
During an interview after the Women Tell All taping earlier this month, Us Weekly asked the 28-year-old tennis pro how he’s feeling going into the finale and whether he’s worried about any backlash for the choice he made.
“I can’t even tell you if there was a choice — you know that!” Joey told Us with a smile. “But it’s always like I have a level of excitement because I am ready to get to being back to Joey again. Joey, the Bachelor, has been so fun, but this is a lot it — it’s a lot to go through. It’s a lot to take in from time to time, and I’m just ready to have the answer and everything be out there, whatever happened, whatever people think, all these different theories, I’m ready for it to all be [put] to rest. And I can kind of know and have whatever it was be coming out and then we can just kind of move forward.”
Joey solidified his final two, Daisy Kent and Kelsey Anderson, on the March 18 episode of the ABC series. In the preview for the finale, Joey is shown breaking down in tears as he notes no one expected things to go this way.
“That was crazy. I didn’t expect that at all. I can’t think that’s happened before,” he said in the clip. “I don’t even know what to say. I know I gave as much as I could. I’m sick of feeling like this. It feels wrong, but I don’t know what to do.”
Executive producer Claire Freeland previously revealed that Joey’s final rose ceremony shaped the season and resulted in the idea to put some of the emotional footage from the ending in the series premiere.
“We felt like we had an opportunity to not just make the change for the sake of making a change,” Freeland told Indiewire in February. “We had what we needed to back it up.”
Theories have subsequently run wild within Bachelor Nation, with fans guessing that Joey’s first choice quits, one of his contestants returns and more.
“I know that they are real emotions. I know that from what I’m told, it is something that hasn’t happened before, and I think once you get to that point and you follow the actual story line, people will understand what those tears mean and that’s the best I can say,” Joey previously teased to Us.
There was also speculation that Joey spoiled the ending when he and Kelsey A. were sharing photos with similar backdrops in February.
“Obviously anything that comes out like that, I can’t really speak on it. I know people are really trying to figure out what’s going on,” Joey told Us when asked about the theory. “Yeah, I can’t speak to anything that’s sent because it’s not really something that I’m paying attention to.”
The Bachelor finale airs on ABC Monday at 8 p.m. ET.
