It’s been three years since JoJo Fletcher and Jordan Rodgers met on The Bachelorette, but some rules of the ABC dating series never change — including that contestants shouldn’t be in relationships when they join the cast.
The season 12 couple weighed in on the controversy surrounding season 15, including accusations that Hannah Brown’s contestants Jed Wyatt and Peter Weber had girlfriends back at home while pursing the former pageant queen.
“Here’s my take on Peter and the Jed situation. Peter and Jed are two totally different situations,” the 28-year-old former Bachelorette told Us Weekly exclusively. “Peter, obviously, not great timing, but [they] broke up before he went on the show. So I think that they’re on two different levels, and you know, maybe this was like Peter’s way of … who knows what his relationship was. But maybe he knew it wasn’t going down a good path. The show came along. It’s like, ‘This is a good opportunity for me to have that, like, push to break up.’ But I think, if you go on the show with a girlfriend, that is the most awful thing any human could do.”
Jordan, 30, added that his relationship status was the first thing ABC asked him before he signed on for the series.
“That’s the precursor,” he noted.
JoJo, who was the runner-up on season 20 of The Bachelor before she was named the Bachelorette, did admit, however, that she was “recently single” before she met Ben Higgins.
“I had only been broken up for, like, two months, so that, in my mind, I was like, ‘This is really early. Like, can I feel things like this?'” she explained.
The sports commentator, who proposed to JoJo during the season 12 finale, then pointed out that there are “always two sides” to the story.
“I mean, maybe the other person that’s sitting at home now feels like they were still mentally in the relationship,” Jordan told Us. “Relationships are messy. That’s the thing. … [After The Bachelorette] we buckled down, got back to normalcy. You know, learned about each other, tried to put blinders on for all the craziness that was going on outside. It’s not easy.”
The twosome, whose new home renovation series, Cash Pad, premieres on CNBC on Tuesday, July 23, joked they went right back to “renovating houses” after their Bachelorette finale aired.
“People always ask, like, ‘What’s one piece of advice you’d give to Bachelor Nation couples coming out?’ And I always said, ‘I think what saved us was not lingering in that sort of life and not staying in L.A.,” JoJo explained to Us. “It’s like, ‘That’s fun and that’s cool,’ but I think when your focus is on your relationship, you really need to come back, you need to ground yourself, you need to jump back into work, and for us, we both did that individually. You went to football, I had my houses and I roped him on in.”
For more from JoJo and Jordan — including who they think should be the next Bachelor — watch the video above!
Cash Pad airs on CNBC Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET.
