Jenn Tran was “very shocked” to see her ex-boyfriend Matt Rossi show up in New Zealand on her season of The Bachelorette.
“It’s not like we were in Kansas or Connecticut. He flew to New Zealand,” Jenn, 26, said on the Thursday, August 1, episode of “The Viall Files” podcast. “And at first, when I saw him, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, a friendly face. I’m so excited. He must be here to give me some advice or something.’ And very, very quickly, I was like, ‘This man is not here to give me advice.’”
The fourth episode of Jenn’s Bachelorette season, which aired on Monday, July 29, ended with Matt surprising her in person to confess that he still has feelings for her. “I really do love you,” he told Jenn, who exclaimed, “Matthew?!”
The love confession “confused” Jenn, as she and Matt “hadn’t dated in three years.” She explained on the podcast: “We dated for, like, three months, so we were not in love. And so, yeah, I was really, really shocked and confused and [was] trying to wrap my head around what exactly it is that he had wanted from me in that moment.”
However, Jenn said she doesn’t think Matt wanted to appear on the show to get his 15 minutes of fame. “The thought definitely crossed my mind, but I know him very well from knowing him for three years, and I thought, ‘I’m gonna ask the question. Do you really mean that? Why are you actually here?’” she shared. “But I think when he doubled down, I was like, ‘Oh, OK, s—t. This is serious.’ I don’t think he would have flown all the way across the country to New Zealand if it wasn’t.”
Elsewhere on the podcast, Jenn said that although her relationship with Matt was brief, they remained friendly over the years and were talking more after she appeared on Joey Graziadei’s season of The Bachelor earlier this year.
Jenn confirmed — like Matt said during the reality show on Monday — that he had invited her to be his plus-one at a handful of weddings in Colombia. “I had never been to Colombia before. I was like, ‘A free trip to Colombia? That sounds great.’ So, I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll be your plus-one to Colombia if I’m not doing anything,’ and that’s kind of where it all came from.”
She was unable to go after she was named this season’s Bachelorette. “He was just like, ‘Yeah, that sounds great. Good for you. I’m happy for you,’” Jenn said. “He wasn’t like, ‘I don’t want you to go I love you.’”
Host Nick Viall went on to ask Jenn whether she ever considered reconciling with Matt in the years since their split. “I think back then, like, before all of this happened, my mindset was more like, ‘He’s someone I feel very comfortable with and very familiar [with] and someone who knows me very well,’” she said on Thursday. “And so, I wasn’t thinking, like, ‘We’re gonna date. I like him so much.’ And also, because we just lived in different states at the time. So, I didn’t see him in that light during that time.”
In a teaser for the next Bachelorette episode, Matt looks dressed to impress while seemingly arriving at the cocktail party with Jenn’s other suitors. “I will say yes, we did see him in a tux,” Jenn confirmed on Thursday, before adding, “You’ll just have to watch and see what happens with that.”
Without spoiling her Bachelorette ending, Jenn told Viall, 43, that she is “very happy with the way things turned out, and I couldn’t have seen it going any other way.”
The Bachelorette airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
