The Bachelorette runner-up Blake Horstmann had a tough time coming back from his split with Becca Kufrin after she broke up with him and accepted an engagement offer from Garrett Yrigoyen in the season finale.
“Right now, I’m in a good place, I am. I’m in a really good place. The healing process was long … I’m not going to act, like, overnight, I felt better all of a sudden. But I had some good support around me. I feel a lot better,” Horstmann said on a new episode of Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti’s Almost Famous podcast, as first reported by Us Weekly. “I had been healing, but it wasn’t until After the Final Rose where I had felt, like, the door was closed. It really wasn’t. And it wasn’t even when I saw her. It was when I saw them together … on the couch when I thought, ‘They’re happy.’ … I’m ready to move on.”
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The connection between he and Kufrin was immediate and real, he added.
“I was really in love,” he continued. “It was a weird, instant connection we had. But yeah, it was tough. Those last few weeks were obviously very hard on me.”
Following the split, Horstmann was also having to deal with potentially being cast as the next Bachelor — a role that eventually went to Kufrin’s third runner-up Colton Underwood.
“That was the hardest part, was not knowing [if I was the Bachelor],” Horstmann explained. “That was the worst part. I wasn’t really worried if I was or wasn’t, I just wanted to know if I was or wasn’t. And so when I got that call that I wasn’t going to be the Bachelor, it was a lot of weight off my shoulders. I didn’t realize how much it was weighing on me until I got that call where it was, like, ‘We’re going with Colton.’”
He and second runner-up Jason Tartick, who was another fan favorite choice for ABC‘s leading man, were able to bond over the stressful waiting time, however.
“I thought for sure it’d be me or Jason, to be honest. I really did,” he said. “It was surprising. It was something that we definitely bonded over.”
After the chips fell where they did, Horstmann said that he, Tartick and Underwood “are very good friends” and they were “very transparent” with each other throughout the time they were waiting on the casting news.
“We didn’t want anybody to be left in limbo, so we let each other know exactly what we knew, when we knew it,” Horstmann said. “[The producers] couldn’t really try and be sneaky with us, really.”
The Bachelor will return for a new season in January 2019.
Photo credit: ABC
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NEW YORK CITY – DECEMBER 19: "Toil and Trouble" – Elsbeth is thrown into the world of television after the showrunner of a long-running police procedural is brutally murdered in his office, and although it appears to be the act of a disgruntled fan, she begins to suspect the show's longtime star Regina Coburn (Laurie Metcalf) who yearns for artistic fulfillment. Meanwhile, Judge Crawford (Michael Emerson) continues to be a thorn in Elsbeth's side, on the CBS original series ELSBETH, Thursday, Dec. 19 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs). Pictured (L-R): Carrie Preston as Elsbeth Tascioni and Carra Patterson as Kaya Blanke. (Photo by Michael Parmelee/CBS via Getty Images)
