Before season 9 of Bachelor in Paradise kicks off, Us Weekly is looking back on season 8 with star Johnny DePhillipo.
“I think I’ve matured so much. You grow so much [filming Bachelor in Paradise], you really do. And it’s not just a show. It’s a big therapy session, in a way,” Johnny began on a recent episode of Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast. “And you talk about everything in life and what you want and how you want to be treated and how you want to treat others. … You really do walk away with some good.”
Bachelor Nation will recall Johnny getting engaged to Victoria Fuller during the 2022 season. “We were good for a little bit. We were good until we weren’t,” he quipped to Us.
Johnny and Victoria split while the show was airing, and she quickly moved on with Bachelorette season 17 alum Greg Grippo. When asked whether the pressure of getting engaged played a role in their split, Johnny told Us that he thinks he and Victoria would’ve suffered “the same fate” regardless of the Neil Lane diamond.
“It is a lot of pressure, but when you’re there [and] so in that world — it doesn’t feel like pressure when you’re there,” he said. “It just feels right. And then it doesn’t really happen until you leave and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m engaged. Oh s—t, let’s figure this out.’”
While Johnny and Victoria didn’t figure things out, she is still dating Greg. Johnny told Us that he isn’t surprised that the twosome are going strong.
“Honestly, no. She really liked them and she still does,” he explained. “And it took a lot for her to do whatever happened. So she seemed super happy about it all and good. I’m happy. She’s happy.”
The last time the exes spoke was after the BiP reunion in fall 2022. “After the reunion, we had talked for a little bit just about everything that went down and that was it,” he said. “We kind of went our own ways.”
Despite the messy breakup, Johnny told Us that he has no regrets. “It was an experience. It was amazing, sad. It was happy. It was everything,” he said. “It was just a roller-coaster. But like I said, no regrets. I enjoyed every second of it.”
While Johnny told Us that he was contacted by the network to return for season 9 of BiP, he opted to spend time in South Jersey with his grandfather, who has Parkinson’s disease.
“He’s kind of the glue to our family and I don’t know how much longer he has, so I decided to kind of pick up and come here for a couple months,” he said before detailing his bartending gig. “And there was a local café bar that was hiring and I knew them and I’ve been bartending forever. So I decided to bartend for the summer and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past two, three months, and I’m loving it.”
As for his love life off screen, Johnny told Us that he’s seeing someone — who fans might’ve spotted in the background of one of his recent Instagram posts.
“It’s kind of ongoing right now and she’s an amazing person and we’ve been having so much fun together, but I just don’t [know]. I’m moving back to Florida and it’s very, kind of, tricky at the moment,” he told Us of his mystery woman. “It’s a weird thing. But I care for her a lot. So yeah, she’s super cool.”
For more from Johnny, including his reaction to ex Gabby Windey’s new romance, listen to Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast.
