Kaitlyn Bristowe Gets Candid About Exes Shawn Booth and Nick Viall on ‘Not Skinny But Not Fat’: Revelations

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Kaitlyn Bristowe Gets Candid About Exes Shawn Booth and Nick Viall on 'Not Skinny But Not Fat': Revelations

New tea to spill! Kaitlyn Bristowe has never shied away from a candid conversation, recently revealing that her fiancé, Jason Tartick, had a run-in with her ex-fiancé, Shawn Booth, on an airplane in Nashville. “He was on Jason's flight today to New York,” the 37-year-old former Bachelorette said on the “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast on Tuesday, January 31, calling the situation “hilarious.” Bristowe said that her current beau and ex did not say hello — but definitely saw each other. The “Off the Vine” podcast host was engaged to Booth, 35, from 2015 to 2018 after meeting on the ABC reality show. Bristowe has since revealed that their three-year relationship struggled because the fitness trainer “never ​got over” her sleeping with runner-up Nick Viall on the show. “I want to have a little bit of compassion and empathy for it because I don't know if I could get over that either. You know, like, him having sex with another woman on national television and me just be like, ‘Ah, it was me the whole time,’ and then watching it back and be like, ‘Oh s—t, it was not me the whole time,’” Bristowe explained. “I mean, I made sure to tell him everything that happened before he proposed to me because I didn't want him to watch back.” She added: “To come out of [The Bachelorette] and actually have confidence in your love would be really challenging. … As much as that pissed me off and I wanted to be like, ‘Get over it.’ I also was like, ‘I would be really insecure too.’ … He went through some really tough stuff as a kid and didn't trust people. So I try and look at it from that perspective. He did some really hurtful things to me, and I did some hurtful things to him and I don't know it's just it's a really tough show to come out of and have a healthy relationship.” During the conversation on the Dear Media podcast, Bristowe also cited Booth’s “ego” as a problem. “I'll never forget. I said ‘Shawn, if you just put your ego aside, we could probably work.’ And he was like, ‘What ego? You've crushed my ego!’” she said. Booth, for his part, gave a rare interview in November 2021, calling their relationship a “trauma bond” and saying it wasn’t “true love.” One month later, Bristowe exclusively told Us Weekly that his remarks made her “sad.” “I didn’t read it. People told me about it, but it actually just made me a little sad because he had every opportunity to just be happy for me and be happy at where he’s at in life. And he just still seems a little bitter,” she said on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast. “And I was just confused by that because it’s been three years and I thought maybe he would just, you know, we’d want each other to be happy.” Scroll through for more from Bristowe on “Not Skinny But Not Fat”:

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Kaitlyn Wasn't 'In Love' With Chris — But Jason 'Loved' Becca

While they both finished as the second runner-up on their respective seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, Bristowe and Tartick have different answers when asked whether they were “in love” with the lead of the show.

“I asked him, I was like, ‘Were are you actually [in love with Becca]?’ Because I think about myself in that situation with Chris Soules and I'm like, ‘I don't know if I was actually in love with him.’ … And he said, ‘Yeah,’” she explained. “If Jason would ever post anything about his time [with Becca], I’d be like, ‘Don't do that.’ But I love her, and I get why he was in love with her. She's one of my favorite people out of the franchise. … And I know he's not in love with her anymore.”

Bristowe added: “It’s funny because I was so insecure with Shawn where if he was in love with somebody else, I couldn't even hear her name.”

When it comes to Soules, Bristowe doesn’t know if she was in love with him or wrapped up in the environment — and the competition of it all. She noted that at the time of the farmer’s season, the show’s therapist told her that she was “so scared for [her]” after every rose ceremony because she knew Bristowe would be “bored to death” if Soules picked her and they wed.

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Kaitlyn and Shawn Have Seen Each Other 3 Times Recently

In addition to the plane run-in, Bristowe revealed she’s seen Booth out “three times in the last three months” after “years” without a run-in. While she didn’t “say hi,” she would “love to” in the future.

“It hasn't been [where] we’re, like, right there and could say hi, it was more like he was in a distance,” she explained.

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Producers 'Sexualized' Nick to Kaitlyn

“They really sexualized Nick to me. There was one producer — I've never even said this, you get the exclusive — one producer actually said to me, after I would kiss him, she'd come in and like wipe my lips and, like, lick her lips and be like, ‘Oh, I just want to know what that tastes like — to, like, make out with Nick,’” Bristowe alleged. “They really, like, put them on a pedestal to me. … That was part of their tactic. … I was brainwashed.”

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Why Kaitlyn Didn't Text Nick About His Engagement

Bristowe said that Viall and fiancée Natalie Joy — who got engaged earlier this month — “seem legitimately meant for each other,” but she didn’t text him congratulations.

“He does a whole thing about not texting your ex, so I was like, ‘Is this me crossing a line?’” she said, referring to the Don’t Text Your Ex Happy Birthday author. “I wanted to, but I then I was like, ‘Is that weird?’”

Bristowe also joked that she found out about Joy, 23, being much younger than Viall, 42, recently when an Instagram account joked that the nurse was 15 when Viall was on season 11. She subsequently quipped that Viall would only invite her to his wedding for “headlines” — but she would go if her and Tartick scored an invite.

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Her 'Toxic' Relationship With Shawn

Bristowe noted that she and Booth were both “toxic” to each other in their relationship. Even after they split, she brought Olivia Caridi with her to record her first podcast with Tartick in October 2018 because her ex requested she do so.

“I literally took an Uber to go to the studio to podcast with Jason and I almost canceled because I was bawling my eyes out in the Uber because Shawn was being mean to me,” she recalled. “We had already broken up [but] I don't know, he was being mean. And right before I got out of the Uber, the Uber driver looked at me and said, ‘Don't ever let anyone talk to you like that.’ And then I sobbed even harder. … I walked in and then Jason walked in, and I was FaceTiming my dad trying to calm down. And then Jason saw me, and I was like, ‘I’m a mess. I'm just going through it.’ And he was like, ‘Great. I'm a mess, too. I just came from a charity event where I cried.’”

She continued: “Do you know why Olivia was there? Because I was scared of Shawn, and I wanted a buffer because he was being weird about me podcasting with a Bachelor dude being single. So I was like, ‘Fine, I'll bring a buffer.’”

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Making Up With 'Bachelor' Creator Mike Fleiss

Bristowe has been open about Fleiss telling her she couldn’t do Dancing With the Stars in 2015 because her new “passion” should be Booth — and not fame or dance. Years later, she went on to compete and win the competition in 2020, but only recently had a good chat with Fleiss.

“He never liked me in the first place. He didn't want me to be the Bachelorette. A couple of the producers had to convince him and then, now fast forward, I was just at the finale for the last season, Gabby and Rachel’s, and saw Fleiss and you could tell he wanted to avoid me, but I just walked right up to him and I was like, ‘Hey!’” she said. “And he's like, ‘Kaitlyn, really proud of everything you've done.’ … And I was like, ‘Cool!’ Because I was like, you know what, I could have shut my mouth and I could have not tweeted and called him a sexist piece of s—t. But I did and I was like, I’m standing by how I feel, women need the same opportunity as the men, and I got somewhere from it and I'm proud of myself for it.”

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Chris Harrison Hosting Fallout

After ABC tapped Bristowe and Tayshia Adams to step in for Harrison when he was let go in 2021, the DWTS champ said she reached out to him “10 times without him responding.”

“Then I was like ‘OK, he hates me.’ And we were best friends and now he hates me,” she said, adding that she wanted Harrison to know he was “irreplaceable” in the franchise and she “didn’t know” exactly what the former Bachelorettes' roles would entail. “And then I saw him at Wells [Adams] and Sarah’s [Hyland] wedding and I walked to him and I was like, ‘I miss you,’ and he was like, ‘Well I’ve always been here.’ …  So yeah, that was tough.”

Bristowe added that Harrison has since started responding to her messages again — and she was surprised to hear he didn’t include her on his podcast, “The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever,” when listing those who were there for him at the time.

Bristowe also recalled finding out that the network didn’t want her to continue hosting after season 18 of The Bachelorette — and successfully flying solo at Michelle Young’s After the Final Rose when Tayshia had COVID.

“I was in the back of the bus [on tour with DWTS] and Rob Mills and [a producer] Bennett called me and I thought they're gonna be like, ‘Alright, so you're our new host.’ And they were like, ‘Well, you probably saw this coming, but we can't have you anymore.’ And I was like, ‘What?’” she said. “And so they were like, ‘Yeah, we just we need a more consistent host. And so we're going with Jesse Palmer.’”