Slight spoilers are ahead. Sometimes speaking to a Bachelorette before joining her season can give you a huge leg up. Case in point: Nick Viall and Kaitlyn Bristowe in 2015. The two talked extensively and even FaceTimed before he crashed her midway through her Bachelorette season. It's hardly shocking then that he later made the final two. But Blake Moynes' DMs to Katie before her Bachelorette season are a very different case. It's true that Moynes did DM Thurston before coming on the show, but it was not exactly a meet cute, according to both parties.
Thurston said on the July 5 Bachelorette episode that Moynes just reached out to say she'd done "a good job" on Matt James' Bachelor season. Moynes further explained his side of his direct messages to Thurston while on the Click Bait podcast. He said he'd DMed Thurston following her first night on James' season, when she memorably exited the limo with a vibrator. "I was like, 'Yeah, I like what she's about,'" Moynes said on the podcast. "It’s the fact that she had the balls to have fun with it, and go with it, and go with the flow."
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Moynes has pulled this move with a Bachelorette before. He also DMed Clare Crawley prior to going on her season, but it didn't matter at all in the end. Instead of forming a lasting connection with Moynes, Crawley chose Dale Moss, whom she swears up and down she never DMed Moss before their Bachelorette meeting. Either you vibe with someone or you don't, and Moynes doesn't necessarily have a leg up just because he slid into Thurston's DMs after The Bachelor.
In fact, Thurston wasn't actually all that receptive to his reaching out, per Moynes. "Her responses were very cold back," he said on Click Bait. "She was nice, but she didn't open up her dialogue in any way. It was shut down right then and there." So he stopped messaging her until he saw Thurston had been named the Bachelorette. Then he pulled some strings and reached out to his second Bachelorette Tayshia Adams to get an audience with Thurston on her season.
While the men definitely bristled when Thurston admitted she and Moynes had DMed before, that's not what won her over. Thurston said she liked his vibe in person, and that's why she invited him to stay on her season after meeting with him in New Mexico. She then gave him a one-on-one date to see if they really had the chemistry necessary for him to stay and they instantly clicked. "Conversation with Blake is easy," Thurston said on their date. She was happy that they were able to get beyond a surface-level conversation and was pleased with his response after she opened up to him about her experience with sexual assault. "I took a gamble with Blake," she said about inviting him to join her cast. "But after tonight, I know for a fact that I made the right decision."
But let the record state that Moynes did not get ahead by DMing a Bachelorette. If anything, they clicked despite their stunted exchange.