The country is ostensibly shut down due to a global pandemic, and yet the men and women of The Bachelor continue to make headlines.
Earlier this week, contestant Kelley Flanagan (who has rekindled some sort of relationship with Peter Weber during quarantine) spoke to Bachelor alums Ben Higgins and Ashely Iaconetti on their “Almost Famous” podcast to address some behind-the-scenes actions viewers at home didn’t see. Per Us Weekly, she claimed producers “manipulated” Weber and “locked me up in a closet for three hours” so they couldn’t interact. Wait, what?!
Before you freak out, Chris Harrison spoke with Entertainment Tonight on April 10 to clear up the situation. The show’s longtime host told ET reporter Lauren Zima that he called Flanagan to talk about her recent interview. “I said, ‘What was that? We don’t lock people in closets, so clearly you weren’t locked in a closet for three hours,” he recalled of the conversation. Harrison also said her comments were “taken a little out of context.”
“What she meant by that was she was frustrated. She’s a smart girl who I think is used to getting what she wants, and she didn’t get that time with Peter,” the host said, believing that Flanagan may have been referring to a moment in Cleveland when she was being interviewed by a producer. “You’re not in a closet. It’s in a room, and sometimes it takes hours,” he explained. “It depends on what’s going on at the time… I think Kelley was frustrated at the time, and that’s how she articulated that.”
Harrison went on to tell ET that Flanagan apologized for how her statements were perceived. “She said, ‘That was not what I meant to say.’ She’s like, ‘I’m so sorry that it came out that I was locked in a closet,'” he said. “So everybody, it’s okay. Kelly was not locked in a closet, she’s safe and she’s good, and she apologized and I laughed it off. I was like, ‘I get it, I knew what you were trying to say.'”
That same day, Harrison also told Glamour he was surprised by Flanagan and Weber’s newly rediscovered connection. “That one caught me out of the blue,” he said. He also recognizes how much Bachelor news has been flying around during this period of isolation.
“I think once we all come out of this quarantine, there’s going to be a lot of catching up to do to figure out what’s been going on,” Harrison said. We’re sure he’ll keep us posted.
