‘I Was Scared to Death’

After 19 years as the host of The Bachelor franchise on ABC, Chris Harrison had a messy departure from the show after facing backlash for racially offensive remarks during an interview in early 2021. Harrison made a public apology following the interview and announced that he was stepping back from the show. It was evidently not enough, and it was announced in June 2021 that Harrison had left the franchise completely.

Since leaving, Harrison has remained silent on the subject. That is, until now. Harrison’s new podcast on iHeartRadio, The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever… dropped this week, and the former host is finally opening up, and throwing a little shade at ‘Bachelor Nation’. The new podcast, with a title that plays on The Bachelor’s well-known, exaggerated marketing phrase, is supposedly about romantic relationships as a whole. Harrison used the first episode to address his earlier departure and the rocky path that followed. “If this is going to be about relationships, the most important part of that is communication,” Harrison began. “We have not talked in a long time, and I think it’s time we finally have that chat. And I’m sorry it’s taken so long.”

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The 2021 remarks that landed Harrison in this position happened during an interview with Rachel Lindsay, who would later become the first black Bachelorette. Harrison defended Rachael Kirkconnell, who was a contestant on first black bachelor Matt James’ season and facing disapproval when fans discovered that she had attended an antebellum-themed ball in 2018. Harrison said that people needed to have “a little grace, a little understanding, a little compassion” for Kirkconnell, who had not addressed the criticism yet but later issued an apology.

Harrison says, “It was a messy, really bad conversation, and I wasn’t my normal eloquent self, but that he “wasn’t really too worried about my job or the show.” Harrison was under the impression that if he apologized and explained the intent behind the remarks, people would understand and move on, but that wasn’t the case.

“Apologies didn’t matter. And I’ve never seen a time like that in my life. I’ve never known that not to work, if you sincerely apologize and open your heart. And it was just like yelling in a cave, it just didn’t matter. It didn’t move anything, and it didn’t move us away from what had just happened. So even after that apology, we were still at ground zero. And it was confusing, and it was scary,” says Harrison.

Related: The Late Late Show: James Corden Explains Why Leaving Was an Emotional but ‘Very Easy Decision’

Chris Harrison Stands By the Intent of His Remarks, but Says ‘I Was Sick to My Stomach’ After Leaving The Bachelor Franchise

ABC

Following his tumultuous departure, Harrison says he was sick to his stomach, “And I lost 20 pounds. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat, I was scared to death of — not of my job, but of my family.” He went on to say,” I worried about my kids. I worried about my family, my mom, my dad, my brother, all my loved ones, my friends.”

The former host still stands by his intent during the infamous interview, “And while the point I was trying to get across I stand by,” Harrison goes on to say, “The way I did it was messy and disappointing, and it’s just not me.” Harrison continues in the podcast saying, “The last thing in the world I ever wanted to do was be an agent of anything negative. Whether it had to do with race, or anything, the fact that I was involved in this and that I had a big part in this, I do own that.”

“My name became synonymous with this political lightning in a bottle moment.” -Chris Harrison

Harrison attributes some of the heightened backlash to the political temperature at the time of the incident in 2021, “It was a very combustible moment in time. And my timing of being sloppy, inappropriate, and wrong at that moment — that’s on me to have not seen that. You know, I was just as frustrated and blind and pissed off as everybody else in the world coming out of what we came out of. But that’s not to say that was OK.”

After nearly two years of silence, it appears Harrison is trying to make amends with the public and explain where he was coming from, “One point that I was trying to make and did not make eloquently was that people need time to think and need time to process. We must have grace and patience for people or else you’re just getting nonsensical, reactive emotion. I wanted to step away and learn and change and go through everything I went through before I had this talk,” Listeners can tune in to Harrison’s podcast or check out Us Weekly to read more.

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