Will season 16 of The Bachelorette actually be the most dramatic ever? JoJo Fletcher, who filled in for host Chris Harrison for several episodes, certainly thinks so.
“It got out that I was there helping out Chris, who had to take a little bit of time off to go be with his son going to college,” the season 12 Bachelorette, 29, told Us Weekly on our “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast while promoting her and Jordan Rodgers’ wedding registry on The Knot. “I jumped right into a mix of a whole bunch of things going on without really knowing anything that had gone on. So, it was definitely crazy.”
Us broke the news in August that ABC called in Fletcher to temporarily replace Harrison, 49, for two weeks after he left the Palm Springs resort to drop off his son, Joshua, at college in Texas.
“The episodes that I was a part of, I can tell you, are going to be very good,” Fletcher teased to Us. “This whole season is going to be very crazy and dramatic. I’m sure everyone’s heard of it before, but it really will be! And it was fun.”
Us confirmed last month that Clare Crawley stopped filming season 16 of The Bachelorette within the first two weeks of production because she was already in love with one of her suitors. The network subsequently called in Tayshia Adams to pick up where the 39-year-old hairdresser left off.
“I’ve gone in and helped for different episodes and different shows at The Bachelor but never to help Chris Harrison, which is a lot of pressure — very stressful,” Fletcher told Us. “I just went in there and tried to make them proud and not ruin The Bachelorette. … I was never going to go in there and try to be Chris. I was going to try and help him out. And you know, do as best as I can. But I was definitely nervous. I don’t know why, like, Chris is the greatest of all time. So yeah, it was stressful, but a lot of fun.”
Fletcher and Rodgers, 32, met and got engaged during season 12 of The Bachelorette, which aired in 2016. While the twosome were set to wed on June 13, they were forced to postpone their nuptials amid the COVID-19 crisis.
“We obviously were bummed that we have to postpone it a whole year. But it’s 100 percent the right decision. We’re super happy to wait it out and have everyone that we love there for when it does come,” Fletcher told Us, noting that they’re moving ahead with replanning their nuptials and their registry. “[The Knot registry] platform is so seamless, it’s so easy. It has everything that we would have wanted, it’s like a one-stop shop. And we also were able to do more than just retail products — we have cash funds, we have a charitable contribution.”
For more from JoJo and Jordan and a breakdown of the biggest Bachelor Nation news, listen to this week’s episode of “Here for the Right Reasons!”