Before Blake Horstmann took over Stagecoach and before Jed Wyatt had a secret girlfriend, the biggest Bachelor Nation drama involved Colton Underwood. The former Bachelor's season may have started all about his virginity, but his infamous fence-jump quickly took over. The show teased it every single week to the point that there was a whole Twitter accounted dedicated to when the moment would finally happen. However, the moment came at the end of a very long rope, and on the most recent episode of This American Life, "Escape From The Lab," Colton revealed that there was a lot of behind-the-scenes drama we totally missed, the biggest being that he had to lie to producers.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
While giving a peak behind the curtain, Colton said that he would often provide a ranked list of contestants to producers in order of how much he liked them — but then, something weird happened.
"And very early on, Hannah Godwin was up there," he explained. "And she got left off of a date...And I sort of recall remember feeling a little burnt when they did that. I was like, so let me get this straight: Hannah's number one on my list right now, and she's not getting a date this week."
That made him realize that the producers were playing one game and he was playing another, so he went rogue, and starting lying about who his top women were.
"I just kept the top the same," he said. "So Hannah was always at the top of the list when I always made the list for them to see, and I never changed it."
So while he was pursuing eventual "winner" Cassie Randolph, producers thought Hannah was the real contender, which is probably why Hannah herself was so shocked by their breakup. However, it also meant that the producers didn't know the damage they were doing when they flew out Cassie's dad to convince her to leave the show.
"I think that it backfired because then they were like, whoa, we thought it was Hannah because you kept telling us even on your list, when you'd rank them, Hannah's one," Colton remembered.
This all culminated in the fence-jump, during which Colton wanted to leave the show entirely following Cassie's decision to jump ship. Of course, we know this story has a happy ending, but listen to the interview full of more fascinating details here.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT