Becca Kufrin may have found only heartbreak on The Bachelor, but she’s hoping to have better luck as the star of The Bachelorette season 14.
The 27-year-old publicist was announced to take the role vacated by Rachel Lindsay last season during Tuesday’s After the Final Rose special.
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“Once I got past the initial heartbreak, at the end of the day the show is about finding love,” she said. “I have so much love to give, so hard yes all around.”
Becca’s experience on The Bachelor may have been the worst of any contestant in recent memory, getting engaged to Arie Luyendyk Jr. in the season finale of the show only to be blindsided weeks later with the 36-year-old race car driver’s decision to leave her for runner-up Lauren Burnham, with whom he soon got engaged.
While Becca kept her cool during the breakup, which was shown in excruciating, unedited full during Monday’s After the Final Rose special, she revealed it was mostly out of embarrassment and shock.
“It was embarrassing the way he broke up with me with the full cameras and crew around. There was a better and more tactful way to do it” she told PEOPLE Tuesday. “A breakup is hard enough, and to have it all filmed and have to re-watch it and know that people all across the country are watching you get your heart broken, it is embarrassing. It’s not fun. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It was like a slap in the face.”
And while the rest of the country was busy condemning Arie, with one Minnesota Congressman even drafting a bill to keep him out of the state, Becca has responded to her ex with more grace than should be expected.
“He’s a good person, I don’t think he’s a monster and purposely did this to hurt me and make me feel this way. But it’s just the result of his actions,” she said. “At the end of the day, I don’t think he thought through everything of how ending things with Lauren would be, how being engaged to me would be and what breaking up with me and going back to her would be. I don’t think he thought it through, but I don’t think he did it maliciously to break my heart.”
She added that she can’t blame her ex for “following his heart,” but she said she wishes he hadn’t proposed to her and promised to “choose [her] every day” on national TV. And she bears “no ill will towards” Lauren, she added. “They’re going to be together and do their thing. I wanted to move on and have my person that I can focus on and live my life with,” Becca said. “At the end of the day, I do forgive him.”
The Bachelorette returns on May 28.
Photo credit: ABC
