Chris Harrison Spills on Which ‘Bachelor’ or ‘Bachelorette’ Almost Quit the Show

The Bachelor is currently airing its 23rd season, with an early promo for the season showing Bachelor Colton Underwood jumping over a fence in order to escape the cameras and, possibly, the series altogether.

Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, The Bachelor host Chris Harrison revealed that Underwood isn’t the only franchise star to consider quitting, with former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay also expressing doubts about the process during her season, which aired in 2017.

“I remember, Rachel [Lindsay] is someone who comes to mind, who was unbelievably headstrong,” Harrison recalled. “Being a lawyer, I think she was just more authoritative and more articulate about it. And while she’s also athletic, she kind of expressed [her frustration] in different ways.”

“I mean, it happens a lot. It happens more than you think,” the host added of leads considering leaving the show. “There’s varying degrees of it, there’s varying degrees of getting fed up in how you express your anger, in how you express your emotions.”

Of Underwood, Harrison said, “He happens to be the most athletic SOB we’ve ever had, so he was able to express it like an Olympian [by jumping over a fence and quitting], but they all get there.”

“It was like a gazelle being chased by a cheetah, and in this case, I would have been the cheetah chasing Colton, and he leapt that fence and was gone,” he continued of the moment, adding that instead of following Underwood over the fence, he “calmly pushed the button and opened the fence.” “Colton, he was done. He was done with this moment and ready to get away, and he took this fence.”

As host of the franchise, which includes The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, Harrison is often able to form a bond with the leads, offering them advice and helping guide them on their journeys, something he did with Underwood after the big jump.

“That’s where the relationship comes in,” Harrison explained. “That’s where the work that the producers and I have done over the years and getting to know Colton and getting to talk to him… it’s not just some random guy coming up and saying, ‘Dude, let’s talk about this.’ It’s me, it’s our producers. And he knows that deep down, we care as much, if not more, than he does about all this.”

“That’s one of the great things about being a host and a producer,” he said. “You’re kind of a psychologist, figuring these people out, what makes them tick, how do we help them, how do we guide them, and it’s different for all of them.”

Harrison added that he likes to see a “fight” in the series’ leads, as it tells him that they care about the process and the end result.

“You should care. This is your life. This is hopefully the woman of your dreams and somebody you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. You should care about that. You should want to fight for that, you should want to leap over a fence for that,” he said before addressing Underwood specifically. “That’s kind of where he was. He was, when push came to shove, he was ready to push back.”

The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

Photo Credit: Getty / Manny Carabel