The Bachelor contestant Carolina Quixano is sharing her side of the story after being caught in the middle of season 29 drama — and being pulled aside by eventual final rose recipient Juliana Pasquarosa to hash it out on camera.
“I was surprised about the topic of the conversation,” Carolina, 29, said of her in-season chat with Juliana, 28, on the Tuesday, April 1, episode of the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast. “I was not surprised that Juliana was trying to stir the pot, which is why I was, like, trying to shut it down. I was like, you’re not going to catch me fighting another woman on TV. I was just like, ‘I’m bored.’ Like, I don’t want to be a part of this.”
Early on in the season, Rose Sombke told Carolina that lead Grant Ellis said he was thinking of Rose, 27, during his solo dance with Carolina on a group date. Grant, 31, denied that was the case after Carolina went to him and created a strain in her friendship with Rose — and Rose’s connection with Grant. Rose ultimately decided to self-eliminate from the show.
Carolina’s friendship with several of the other contestants — including Juliana — turned sour when they alleged she had a negative energy about the journey despite receiving a coveted one-on-one date from Grant. As the drama continued, Juliana went on to pull Carolina aside for a heart-to-heart conversation and questioned why Carolina was still vying for Grant’s affections if she was unsure of the process.
Bachelor’s Carolina Claps Back at Criticism: ‘God Forbid You’re Not Sure’
“I never had a friendship with Juliana. So when she pulled me, I was like, ‘OK, what’s this going to be about?’” Carolina recalled on Tuesday. “It just felt like it was performative. I feel like at the hotel, we could have talked about it. We could have had a civil conversation the same way that me and Rose did. Me and Rose didn’t feel like we were trying to create drama for a TV show. It felt like we were friends. And with Juliana, I was like — and I told her this — I was like, ‘You could have addressed this at the hotel. You don’t have to be doing this, like, for show.’”
Carolina continued, “And the way that she approached it is she comes up to me and she’s like, ‘I’m just going to keep it real because we’ve been talking s*** about you and I just want you to know before it airs.’ So that’s why I’m like, ‘OK, so what is your question?’ You’re not trying to have a conversation with me. You’re trying to — I don’t know if it’s like assert dominance or have this hero arc or something that you’re protecting Grant. It just felt like it came out of left field.”
Carolina pointed out that the format of the show created an unusual environment for the contestants to discuss their relationships with the same person — which she claimed has been part of The Bachelor franchise experience.
“I was like, ‘How am I being negative by being neutral? By saying, ‘I do like him, but I still have questions. I still need to get to know him more,’” Carolina explained. “I feel like that’s always been a part of the show. Part of the show is struggling with getting to know the guy while he’s still spending time with other women. And I was like, ‘What do you mean I’m negative?’ I wasn’t seeing where it was coming from. I just didn’t understand it.”
The Drama Surrounding Carolina Was Bachelor Grant’s ‘Worst Nightmare’
Carolina continued to defend her stance on being unsure whether Grant was The One.
“Just like Grant didn’t know who he wanted to be with and that’s fair. It seems so like, I don’t know, like embarrassing and anti-feminist to be like, ‘I’m gonna bow down to this man because he’s the Bachelor and have no doubts about him because he’s the Bachelor.’ So like at this moment, I remember asking Juliana, I was like, ‘So you mean to tell me that if he proposed to you, you can absolutely say that you will say yes.’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, then I’m sad for you because you haven’t even been on a one-on-one. So how can you know that you want to be with the guy?’”
She continued, “It’s a whole process and even that whole process is really short. It’s a short amount of time to get married, to get engaged to someone. But like, we still had more time to go. So I wasn’t saying, ‘I hate the guy, I don’t want to be here.’ I was saying, ‘I feel like I need more time.’”
Grant ultimately sent Carolina packing ahead of the hometown episode and ended his season engaged to Juliana. The pair announced during the live After the Final Rose episode in March that they plan to move to Boston together.
“We have to do some normal things where it feels exciting to plan that,” Juliana exclusively told Us Weekly after the finale. “We are coming down from such a crazy high right now. I don’t wanna just try and keep it going — I really want to plateau a bit and just live normally for a minute and then we can start planning and have fun and do all those things.”
