“Bachelor” host Chris Harrison had some nasty accusations thrown at him during Monday night’s “Women Tell All” episode.
And he could have had the remarks, made by booted contestant Rozlyn Papa, edited out, he told TVGuide.com. But he didn’t.
“The producers asked, ‘Are you good with everything?'” Harrison told TV Guide, “and I said, ‘Yeah, I want to show everything,’ because I don’t want to come on and say, yes, she took a swipe at me and a swipe at my family, but we didn’t want to show it out of respect. Out of respect for who? It happened, so it’s part of the show.”
Harrison also called Papa’s remarks “classless and tasteless.”
Papa – who was kicked off the show after other contestants sited rampant evidence she was having an affair with one of the producers – accused the married Harrison of having hit on said producer’s wife.
Harrison had said on Monday’s episode that the producer, Ryan Callahan, was a friend.
Papa fired back, “That’s news to him, especially when you were hitting on his wife in New Zealand. He thought that was crazy.”
Harrison retorted that the remark was “desperate.”
He later told TV Guide, “My wife was in the front row listening to it, [but] I’m a big boy, I can take it. [Papa] wants attention. She went on the Ryan Seacrest show yesterday and accused me of being gay. I hit on this woman in New Zealand, but at the same time I’m gay? She speaks for herself, the type of person she is, the type of tact and class.”
Harrison’s wife, to whom he’s been married for 16 years, obviously has faith in him. But he has also received shout-outs of support from many former contestants on the show, he told E! Online.
“Trista, Ryan [Sutter], Andrew Firestone, Andy Baldwin, Bob Guiney, Jesse Csincsak, Deanna [Pappas] – all these people have just come out of the woodwork saying ‘We’ve got your back,’ from texts or twitters, and it’s kind of cool,” he said.
As for Papa, “You won’t hear me speak out about Rozlyn any more after this interview,” he said.
