When it comes to public break-ups, you can’t go past the moment Sophie Monk broke it off with suitor Jarrod Woodgate on The Bachelorette last season. The vineyard manager from Victoria was a blubbering mess.
Now, as Jarrod, 31, prepares to make his debut appearance on Australia’s first ever season of Bachelor In Paradise, he reveals to TV WEEK that picking up the pieces of his shattered heart after Sophie dumped him wasn’t easy.
“I basically became a hermit after the show finished,” the ex-army officer admits.
“I stayed on the vineyard during the week, and on the weekends I just hid because I found I was getting too overwhelmed by everything that was going on.”
Jarrod and The Bachelorette’s Sophie Monk didn’t work out.
Sophie, 38, declared her love for intruder millionaire publican Stu Laundy, 44, at the final rose ceremony of the season last year.
The nation watched on as Jarrod was left to walk off into the distance rejected and in a flood of tears.
“It took some time to recover,” Jarrod explains.
“Thankfully, my family and friends were a big support and they helped me get through it a lot easier.”
Sophie with her chosen Bachie, Stu Laundy, before their public break-up.
Of learning the news that Sophie and Stu had called it quits just months after the show wrapped, Jarrod admits he wasn’t surprised at all.
“Obviously I didn’t know much about their relationship,” Jarrod says.
“But both parties need to be happy in it.”
He says he has no doubts that Sophie chose the wrong man at the end of the day. In fact, he believes he and Sophie would still be together if she had chosen him.
“Sophie and I would have grown together,” Jarrod says.
“That said, I learnt a lot about myself by dating and spending time with Sophie and it’s made me a better person today.”
So has Jarrod reached out to Sophie since her split from Stu?
“I’ve spoken to her briefly,” he says coyly.
“I was too overwhelmed,” Jarrod says of his break up with Sophie.
While some may be surprised to see Jarrod step back into the spotlight after having his heart crushed on national TV not so long ago, the runner-up believes it’s all part of the healing process.
But there was one person in particular who wasn’t so thrilled about the idea.
“Mum wasn’t too happy about it,” Jarrod says with a laugh. “She saw what happened to me last time and she didn’t want me to go through it again. But I managed to convince her that I needed to do it.”
The risk seems to have paid off, with Jarrod hinting that he has found love on the Fijian island.
Bachelor in Paradise’s Keira Maguire is set to shake things up on the show’s debut season.
He admits both Ali Oetjen and Keira Maguire caught his eye during filming.
“I found Ali very attractive,” Jarrod says. “Keira has a great personality and speaks her mind. I like that.”
And with rumours the series will conclude with an engagement, we couldn’t help but ask whether Jarrod drops to one knee.
“You’ll have to wait and see,” he teases.
