Bachelor's Courtney Robertson Declined $150K, Weekly Bonuses for 'DWTS'
What could have been? Courtney Robertson reflected on life outside of Bachelor Nation, claiming that she was offered a few different reality TV opportunities after making her ABC debut in 2012.
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The Arizona native, now 38, got engaged to Ben Flajnik during season 16 of The Bachelor, but the pair called it quits after only a few months. As it turns out, the dating show wasn’t the only ABC reality series she was approached about joining.
“Dancing With the Stars, I had a meeting with them right after my season [of The Bachelor],” Robertson said during the Thursday, November 11, episode of the “She’s All Bach” podcast. “That was one I would have loved to have done.”
When one of the hosts asked if Flajnik, 39, didn’t want her performing on the ballroom dance competition, Robertson claimed, “He was like, ‘If you do it, you won’t have a fiancé.'”
The I Didn’t Come Here to Make Friends author, however, was excited about the offer, which she said came with “a lot of money” attached to it.
“They explained the whole thing, like, you get to pick out your music and design your costumes,” Robertson said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I would be sparkling all over the place.’ … I got to go and sit in the front row and watch [the show]. And each week you go on, they pay you more. There’s, like, an incentive.”
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According to Robertson, contestants on DWTS are offered “a lump sum” and receive bonuses for each week they advance. “You make another, like, $30,000 or something,” she said, alleging that she was initially offered $150,000 to join the show. “That was kind of exciting.”
The former ABC personality clarified that her ex-fiancé wasn’t the reason she didn’t end up in the DWTS ballroom, explaining that the cast was mostly set in stone when she was being considered.
Robertson and Flajnik had one of the messiest Bachelor breakups, especially after she detailed their ups and downs in her 2015 memoir. However, the pair have patched things up in the years since.
“I was not happy about the book. I didn’t read the book. I flipped through it,” the California native told Us Weekly exclusively in July. “People do things for different reasons — who knows, you know, what she was going through at the time. We’ve since made amends. We’re fine. We’re cool.”
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Flajnik said at the time that the former couple “didn’t speak for probably six years” after their split, but he eventually “reached out and just kind of extended the olive branch” to Robertson, who married Humberto Preciado in October 2020. They welcomed son Joaquin in June 2020 and are currently expecting a baby girl.
When asked where she stands with Flajnik now, Roberston said on Thursday that they’re “on good terms” after they had an honest talk about her book.
“He reached out … and we actually met up in Santa Barbara,” she recalled. “It was really just kind of friendly and … he was like, ‘No more books.'”
