[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
Blake Horstmann, who had a notable run on Becca Kufrin‘s season of The Bachelorette and followed it up on season 6 of Bachelor In Paradise, is getting real about what it was like to be on the show.
And no, we don’t mean behind-the-scenes gossip or drama. Instead, the Colorado native is opening up about the mental health side of things after dealing with something unimaginably serious and severe during his TV time in 2019.
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As you may recall, Horstmann nearly won Becca’s heart during her season of The Bachelorette. But while his star was riding high at the time, it came crashing down after a particularly dramatic, controversial run on Bachelor In Paradise where he was painted as the show’s villain.
Down on the beach in Mexico for the spin-off, Blake got into big trouble after it was revealed that he reportedly slept with two other contestants — Caelynn Miller-Keyes and Kristina Schulman — before filming began, out at country music’s Stagecoach Festival in southern California.
Caelynn used the “dirty secret” to her advantage on the show, choosing when and how to reveal their past tryst to other contestants and eventually confronting Blake himself about it. During their contentious convo, she accused him of trying to “silence” her, and — fair or not — he came away very much looking like the bad guy. On the outs from that point, Blake quit Bachelor In Paradise just five weeks into the season, and went home to Colorado. Now, in a new interview on the podcast Behind The Velvet Rope with host David Yontef, the 31-year-old former reality TV star is revealing just how much of an ordeal he went through during his time on the spin-off — including contemplating suicide as the show began to air on ABC.
Whoa!
Speaking candidly about the controversy with Caelynn and Kristina, and how it ended up being edited and portrayed on the series, Blake said (below):
“When the show was airing, it was just felt like every Monday and Tuesday night for four weeks, five weeks, I was just getting my d**k kicked in. Like I felt like I was just getting punched in the gut over and over and over, you know? I remember calling a producer at one point, and I was like, ‘mercy.’ I was like, ‘edit me out of the rest of the show. I’m going to freaking kill myself.’ And they helped me a little bit towards the end, but I was just like, ‘I can’t handle this anymore.'”
OMG!
Slowly, he notes, things got better — but the bullying and harassment was very real and very sustained, in addition to his own destructive inner thoughts:
“Every single week getting bullied, I’m getting kicked and there’s nothing [I can do], you know? That was when I was really in my really bad [state], and I slowly came out of it. It took a long time and I tell people, like, it doesn’t happen over night. You’re not all of a sudden going to be better. You know, I still have bad days. I remember one thing in particular, it was probably towards the end of the season, and I was the lowest I’ve ever been.”
That’s absolutely awful! What’s even scarier, though, is what he has to say about what this all means for the future of the show. According to Blake, not only was he “not the first” to go through this mental anguish, he believes it will get far worse before it gets better. He revealed:
“I know I’m not the first. I’ve talked to others and unless things change … I don’t know, it’s hard to say what they can do because ABC can’t control social media. ABC can’t control Instagram comments. I don’t know what they are going to do. I mean, hopefully they’re smarter than me, but you see, it’s not a matter of if somebody’s going to kill themselves. It’s when. It’s going to happen. Unless there’s some very big changes in the works, eventually somebody’s going to do it, you know, and it’s going to be horrible.”
Wow. That’s a lot to take in — and so terrible, too. And that last quote seriously has us on edge. We don’t even want to imagine something like that, even while knowing Blake is probably right. Oof…
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Here’s hoping he continues to come out of it well, and life gets better and better for him from here on out. Sincerely wishing him the best in his future endeavors! BTW, if you want to listen to Blake’s full interview on Behind The Velvet Rope, click HERE.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
[Image via Blake Horstmann/Instagram]
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