Six years after Bachelor Nation met Jade Roper on season 19 of The Bachelor, she reflected on her most memorable moments — including telling Chris Soules that she posed for Playboy — on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast.
“I never felt pressure to do anything, but I did know [the Playboy photo shoot] was something they wanted me to bring up,” Roper, 34, told Us while promoting her Tommee Tippee partnership. “I think I always kind of had that idea, like, that dread in the back of my mind of when that moment was going to happen. But if I would have told [producers] I’m not going to do it, they obviously would have just pivoted, and I never would have felt forced to [talk about it on the show].”
Fans may remember Soules, 39, sending Roper home after she showed him her past modeling shots during her hometown date.
“I just wish that I would have felt more empowered about it,” she told Us. “And I think at the time, I just felt a little slut-shamed about it. I felt very shamed, which I don’t at all anymore.”
Another one of Roper’s memorable moments from Soules’ season was the Cinderella-themed date that left her now-bestie Ashley Iaconetti green with envy.
“I got to keep the shoes. So, I still have the clear Louboutin heels,” she revealed about the one-on-one date. “The dress and the diamonds were returned. … One of my favorite scenes of the show is when Ashley wore her princess dress around the house and was, like, eating corn on the cob and talking about it. It’s one of my favorites.”
While Roper went on to meet now-husband Tanner Tolbert on season 2 of Bachelor in Paradise, Soules hasn’t been as lucky in love. He split from winner Whitney Bischoff shortly after they got engaged on the March 2015 finale.
“I was sad for Whitney when they broke up because I know how much she really loved him. And she was my friend and I know how stressful it was for her post-show with their relationship,” Roper recalled to Us. “So, it was really sad for me because I was sad for her, but now she’s happily married [to Ricky Angel] and has a sweet baby. It all worked out.”
Soules went on to have a fling with Victoria Fuller, who appeared on Peter Weber’s season of The Bachelor in 2020.
“I was really surprised about the Victoria thing,” Roper told Us. “I was like, ‘Oh!’”
The “Mommies Tell All” podcast host, for her part, added that she doesn’t always keep up with the ABC series as she and Tolbert are focused on their three kids: Emerson, 3, Brooks, 19 months, and Reed, 4 months.
“There’s a part of me that would love a fourth, but at the same time, I look at Reed and I think maybe his destiny is to be the baby of the family,” Roper, who is talking all things postpartum life on the April 8 episode of Tommee Tippee’s Spill the Milk series, told Us. “I think nobody really knows what to expect [after you have kids] until you’re in it. And you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, nobody told me these things.’”