Rachel Lindsay is speaking her mind about her Bachelor Nation journey and her infamous interview with Chris Harrison that led to his exit from the franchise.
“I’m known for asking direct questions, relevant questions. And Chris was there to promote, nobody even knows — some drink maybe. So it was a perfect storm,” Lindsay, 40, said on the Tuesday, December 3, episode of “Love It or Leave It Presents: Bravo, America!” podcast. “ABC PR wasn’t on the call. Warner PR wasn’t on the call. It was the PR of that drink company, so there’s no one to stop him and say, ‘You’re going the wrong way.’ It was 15 minutes of him ranting and raving.”
In 2021, Lindsay interviewed longtime Bachelor and Bachelorette host Harrison, 54, while she worked as correspondent for Extra. During the chat, the pair talked about Matt James, who was the show’s first Black Bachelor. Lindsay brought up the drama of contestant Rachael Kirkconnell’s attendance at a southern antebellum party while she was in college. (The style of party has received backlash over the years due to the era’s affiliation with slavery and the Confederacy.)
When bringing up the topic, Harrison slammed the criticism and defended Kirkconnell as a victim of cancel culture. Kirkconnell ultimately apologized and James chose her as his winner. Harrison was subsequently let go from the show, which led to a falling out between him and Lindsay.
Keep scrolling for more revelations from Lindsay’s podcast appearance:
Rachel Lindsay Initially Turned Down ‘Bachelorette’
Rachel Lindsay shared that she didn’t plan on becoming the first Black Bachelorette until she had a meaningful conversation with a fan.
“Before I left Finland, [producers] said, ‘We want you to be the Bachelorette.’ And I said, ‘No,’ and I went back to work as an attorney. I just wanted my normal life back,” she recalled before revealing what changed her mind. “And it was someone coming up to me saying, ‘I hear you go far. My daughter looks like you. She loves the show. She’ll see herself represented.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I have to. It’s bigger than me.’”
Rachel Lindsay Recalled Her ‘Rampant’ Drinking During Show
Before The Bachelor and The Bachelorette changed their rules about how much alcohol the contestants could consume, Lindsay recalled how it was a “rampant” experience.
“I’m waking up taking shots of Fireball in the morning,” Rachel Lindsay said on the podcast. “I started my day off every morning with Fireball.”
Lindsay added that she was “fully aware” about how much alcohol she was consuming a day.
“We were all adults, like, I was fully aware that I wanted to wake up in the morning and have a drink,” she reflected. “It just was, for me, like a cup of coffee.”
Rachel Lindsay Told Nick Viall She Loved Him — And Immediately Laughed
Rachel Lindsay shared that she knew she wasn’t in love with Nick Viall while competing on season 21. However, she opted to say “I love you” to him while on their Fantasy Suite date.
“But as I said, I love fireball. They really wanted me to say, ‘I love you’. I said it, I laughed after,” she recalled. “We start laughing, they cut it out.”
While Lindsay wasn’t in love with Viall, she admitted she did care for him and they are still friends.
“I cared for him. I really did. We’re actually friends to this day, but I wasn’t in love. I wasn’t in love at all,” she said. “And I said it, and I kind of laughed, and then I passed out in the Fantasy Suite because I had drank so much that day.”
The Low Down on Rachel Lindsay’s Fantasy Suites Experience
During season 21 of The Bachelor, Rachel Lindsay said she and Nick Viall were not intimate since she “passed out.”
“I never made it to the bedroom. I passed out,” she recalled of her and Viall’s Fantasy Suite date night. “And he was like, ‘I carried you up the stairs and gave you Tylenol and put you in the bed.’”
For Lindsay’s season, she brought three of her suitors to the Fantasy Suites. Instead of being intimate, Lindsay used that opportunity to have candid off-camera conversations with the men.
“I didn’t have sex with everybody that I took to the Fantasy Suite, but I did take all three to the Fantasy Suite. But I had legitimate questions. I had concerns that my parents had [shared]. I had concerns,” she reflected. “I had written down all these things I was asking, like, your credit score, your political affiliation. … I really liked the men that I had brought there. [I was] very serious and intentional, the questions I asked, and it was over.”
Rachel Lindsay Needed ‘Weeks’ to Get Over Peter Kraus Breakup
While Rachel Lindsay ultimately got engaged to Bryan Abasolo, she had a deep connection with Peter Kraus but broke things off due to his indecisiveness.
“I knew I was breaking up with him. I walked in there knowing that was the one thing that I put my foot down with, was that I did not want two people to propose to me. So I remember the producers were like, ‘If you don’t do it tonight, they’re both going to come to the whether they propose or not, they’re both going to meet you at the podium,’” she claimed. “And I didn’t want that. I didn’t want that day to be clouded by that, which, in hindsight, it was because of what happened the night before.”
Lindsay shared that she didn’t expect Kraus to fight for their connection like he did in the finale. She confessed it took her some time to get over the breakup and she was worried about how Kraus was handling it all.
“It was so hard that next day, the day of the proposal, I was crying. I didn’t sleep. My eyes were bloodshot red going to the proposal, and I was like, ‘This is what I was trying to avoid,’ and it’s happening anyway. I was so concerned about [Peter].” she reflected. “I knew Bryan was the right choice, but …I don’t think I’ve ever said this out loud … It took me weeks after the proposal to stop thinking about him and if he was OK. It wasn’t that I was thinking about him like I want to be with him, but he was so emotional, and I was when we left each other that I kept thinking, ‘How is he? Can you tell me how he’s doing? Is he OK?’ Like I really, really cared for him. I really, really did, and that’s something I didn’t anticipate either, that there were going to be two men at the end that I really, really cared about.”
Why Rachel Lindsay Stayed in Her Marriage to Bryan Abasolo
In December 2023, Bryan Abasolo filed for divorce from Rachel Lindsay after four years of marriage. Lindsay confessed that her desire and pressure to have a family was one of the reasons she tried to make her marriage to Abasolo work.
“It’s why I stayed in my marriage longer than I should have. Even before getting married. There were things that I saw, the reasons we broke up, I saw all those things before, but I wanted to have kids, and I wanted to be married and I wanted to be loved, and it’s sad,” she said. “It’s kind of sad. I know a lot of women who put their careers first, and then they look up one day and there are other things that they want for themselves, and they don’t have them, and they kind of settle, or they make sacrifices, and they compromise in ways that they wouldn’t normally do that because of their desire to have some of those other things.”
Rachel Lindsay’s Infamous Conversation With Chris Harrison
Rachel Lindsay claimed that she wasn’t supposed to interview Chris Harrison the day their interview occurred. After a scheduling conflict with the other subject she ended up chatting with Harrison instead. When discussing the online drama about Rachael Kirkconnell, Harrison went on a rant about cancel culture.
“He was just showing his true self, but I was sitting back, like, I know this to be you, the audience doesn’t. I’m just shocked that you have the audacity to be saying this,” Lindsay claimed. “And then when he finished, we’re a 30 minute show, 20 minutes with commercials. I go to my EP, and I said, ‘Did you see that?’ She said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Only air whatever he said about his promotion.’ I said, ‘Put the whole thing on YouTube, unedited.’ And then that’s what happened. And then the next day, it blew up, and I sent it to an executive at ABC, and he was like, ‘Yeah, I already saw it. It’s the first thing on my desk this morning.’”
After Harrison’s remarks went viral, Lindsay claimed she did not get an apology from him until someone advised him to do so.
“He texted me, or called me, that morning and was like, ‘Well, they’re saying I’m gaslighting you.’ He still didn’t get it until somebody said something and apologized,” she claimed. “And then when I tried to explain to him why it was offensive. It was dismissive.”
When asked by host Jon Lovett if she thought Harrison would receive the same punishment today, she believes that he would have been able to return to hosting at some point.
“He would have sat out maybe, maybe he wouldn’t have hosted the finale episode, and he would have been able to come back. I think he thought that for himself,” she said. “If it had not happened in February of 2021 that’s when cancel culture was heightened.”
Why Rachel Lindsay Advocates for More Diversity on Reality TV
Rachel Lindsay shared that her goal with her platform was to be “purposeful” of the message she spreads which is why she advocates for more diversity on reality TV.
“If I could pave the way for other people to come on the show, or apply for the show, or, you know, use the show to have a different path, like I did, then, great. Fine. Now I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do,” she said. “I love that I have a microphone, a voice, a platform. I love that I built a community I love. I think one of the scariest things when you leave the Bachelor is, well, does anybody care what I have to say outside of being on The Bachelor? Because that’s how everybody got to know me, and I’m happy that they do.”
