Okay, the most recent season of The Bachelor officially had no rulebook. Not only has the saga of Peter Weber continued well beyond filming thanks to his decision to leave winner Hannah Ann Sluss for Madison Prewett, but now, without a new season of The Bachelorette to distract us, we're left with no choice but to keep rehashing old drama — and boy, is there drama.
At this point, it's all but confirmed that after his split from Madison, Peter and contestant Kelley Flanagan are getting cozy. While he's adamant that they're not dating, the two are quaranting together in Chicago, which means when Peter hopped on Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti's Almost Famous podcast on Tuesday, Kelley was able to join. Unlike every other member of Bachelor Nation, though, she was not vague about her time on the show. In fact, she was very specific about things that bothered her during filming, and it can be summed up in one word: producers.
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Kelley said there was a stark change in Peter's behavior towards her a few weeks into filming, which is when she knew producers had gotten into his head.
“Because on the one-on-one, nothing happened between us, but he had this, like, demeanor toward me that was so pissed off and I was looking at him, like, ‘What the hell were you told?’ because nothing happened here for you to have this attitude," she recalled. "And so right then and there, I knew something was going on behind the scenes, and I was like, ‘This is bullshit’.”
So, apparently during a cut conversation, she decided to drop the facade.
“[I told him], ‘They don’t let me see you. They locked me up in a closet for three hours last week, and they won’t let me see you.’ I said, ‘You clearly know they push some people forward and they don’t push others forward,'" she said. "It’s just I saw him, like, things were getting in his head that he wasn’t able to make his own decision and it just kind of pissed me off."
While ABC has no comment on the closet allegation, this is not the first time in recent months that former Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants have disparaged producers. On Twitter, Blake Horstmann recalled being "bullied" by them on Bachelor In Paradise, and Colton Underwood expressed similar frustrations while doing press for his new book, The First Time: Finding Myself and Looking for Love on Reality TV.
After all this, maybe the next contestant should end up with a producer just to save their reputation. At least, from an appropriate social distance.
Listen to the full interview below.