So, what’s a gal to do if you’re a contestant on The Bachelor, but your connection with the Bachie himself is a little … meh?
Do you A) Fake actually liking him to stay in the show, B) Ignore him and just have fun with the other girls or C) Beg to go home but get roped into a fake romance with a crew member as part of a dramatic little side-plot?
For The Bachelor contestant Rachael Arahill – yep, the one with the massive lips who wore a wedding dress during episode one – it seems Option C actually became a thing.
In the only interesting plotline to emerge this season, on tonight’s episode of The Bachelor Rachael admits she doesn’t have feelings for Matt and is supposedly busted handing out her number to a crew member.
Matt finds out and is super pissed off. “Why stick around if you’re not interested? I need to have a chat with Rachael immediately,” he says earnestly in the promo.
While we wait to see how their bust-up turns out on tonight’s episode, we’ve got some juicy goss from an insider on set who claims the whole thing was actually a set-up by producers.
“Rachael was telling everyone that she didn’t really have a connection with Matt. She wanted to leave the show but producers asked her to stay for a few more days,” one of the show’s contestants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told NW.
“Someone gave a producer Rachael’s number, but she said it wasn’t her that gave it away,” the source revealed.
“They then orchestrated the whole thing and Rachael was made to say, ‘I don’t even think Matt’s hot, I’d rather hook up with one of the producers’.”
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According to another insider, Rachael said she “never liked Matt” and was looking for a Plan B, saying she would “would rather f— ‘Plan B’ than Matt”.
According to the source, Matt didn’t even like her, but producers kept her around on the show for added drama.
“All the girls knew the producer relationship wasn’t real, but Matt didn’t know,” the source said.
However, a separate source claimed Rachael’s romance was not set-up or orchestrated by a producer, and she did genuinely have her eye on the crew member.
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This week, Rachael revealed that she wasn’t the only contestant feverishly looking for a “Plan B” once she realised Matt wasn’t her cup of tea.
She claims many of the other Bachelorettes developed love interests other than Matt on set.
“Before we’d go to bed, all the girls in the house would joke that only one girl was going to end up with Matt. So what were the rest of us going to do? What would our back-up plan be?” she told TV WEEK.
“The crew were good-looking, so everyone had their own guy they’d joke about and say, ‘This guy is hot,’ and, ‘This guy is mine when I leave the house.'”
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She said it was disheartening to realise her time on the show would be up because she and Matt had zero connection.
“All the girls in the house had made these great connections with Matt and had these big feelings for him,” she said.
“But I thought, ‘I don’t feel this at all in any way shape or form’,” adding that she’d been “thinking about walking out for two weeks”.
“I had my bags packed. Everyone is head-over-heels for this guy and I don’t care about him at all.”
The Bachelor Australia airs on Wednesday and Thursday nights at 7.30pm on Network 10.
For more The Bachelor Australia 2019 content, check these links out below!
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