'Bachelor' Creator Seemingly Responds to Rumors Greg Is the Next Lead
Could the season 26 Bachelor really be Greg Grippo? Don’t put all your roses in that basket.
Hours after Bachelor spoiler account Reality Steve claimed that the 27-year-old sales representative from Katie Thurston‘s season of The Bachelorette will be the franchise’s next lead, franchise creator Mike Fleiss seemingly responded.
“What I’ve been hearing the past 5 days or so regarding the next Bachelor are this…been told it’s going to be Greg,” Reality Steve tweeted on Thursday, August 19. “Obviously it’s never ‘official’ until ABC announces it (whenever that may be), but at this point I would be very surprised if it’s not him.”
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Hours later, Fleiss, 57, began tweeting. “Major announcement regarding #TheBachelor !!! No official decision has been made… Stay tuned. Have an ice cold, gluten-free
@OmissionBeer,” he wrote. “These decisions regarding our next #TheBachelor are complicated. Like the complicated process that gives us delicious, gluten-free
@OmissionBeer.”
The longtime producer previously teased the announcement on Tuesday, August 17, dropping hints about the next Bachelor. “All I can tell you right now is that #BachelorNation will be very happy,” he wrote at the time. “Well, maybe not everybody…”
Grippo was at the center of the drama during season 17 of The Bachelorette, sending himself home on the August 2 episode after Thurston, 30, wouldn’t say “I love you.” When the pair reunited on the After the Final Rose special, she accused him of gaslighting her and faking his emotions.
“I am very happy, absolutely, but that doesn’t take away the anger that I had watching this back and seeing the way you treated me — using me to get the experience, the exposure. Dare I say the ‘acting’ practice at my expense,” the Bachelor alum said during the pre-taped August 9 special. “I mean [the acting] was pretty good until the end when you kind of f—ked it up and ran away. … You’re a liar. You did not love me.”
Katie Thurston Suggests Greg Grippo Gaslighted Her as Bachelor Nation Weighs In on Split
She also claimed he was “rude” to her when exiting the show.
“Gaslighting is when you try to make someone else feel like it’s their fault. You came at me and tried to make it seem like I did something so horrible that you had to leave. Yet when I’m watching back there, you’re pretty much admitting, ‘I just didn’t feel the same,’ and ‘Oh, we were just on different pages,” she continued at the time. “You couldn’t have just been a man and had a normal conversation instead of being so rude and dramatic and leaving without even saying goodbye?”
After Katie claimed that Greg used her not saying “I love you” back as an “escape,” he shot back.
Katie Accuses Greg of Faking His Feelings: 'After the Finale Rose' Revelations
“It was you telling my mother that I was a front-runner in this while I was telling her that you were The One,” he said. “After I tell you that you fill a hole in my heart, [you saying] that I have a rose. Me telling you I wanted to leave … it wasn’t you saying, ‘Don’t leave, I’m not going to do this without you’ or ‘I’m coming with you.’”
He later added, “I got scared that you were using this terminology with me and I felt like you were playing the Bachelorette role with me instead of just being Katie.”
