Two Bachelorettes, several Bachelor in Paradise flings and a controversy with Chris Harrison later, Ivan Hall is reflecting on his Bachelor Nation journey on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast.
“It’s been some crazy times — I’ve run the gambit of bachelor experiences, I would say,” the 30-year-old engineer exclusively tells Us.
Fans met Ivan on Clare Crawley’s season of The Bachelorette, which was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. “What surprised me actually is the amount of guys that were on my season that never watched one episode,” he explains. “I was like, ‘OK, you’re getting into this big TV show.’ I watched a previous season or two, just to get reacquainted with it. … There was a surprising amount of people who had had no clue what was going on at all. They were like, ‘Oh you get roses?’”
Clare’s stint as the Bachelorette was short-lived as she fell for Dale Moss on night one and they engaged within two weeks of production.
“We were all, like, had no clue what was coming next,” Ivan recalls. “I think, like, half of us kind of thought it might have even been a Bachelor in Paradise type situation where they just bring in a bunch of girls [to] have a little party at La Quinta. Half of us thought it was gonna be just a single Bachelorette and they were just trying to figure out who it was really gonna be. I did kind of have an inkling that it could be Tayshia though. I remember when I was going through the casting process, she was one of the people floated around as being the Bachelorette.”
Tayshia Adams was, indeed, brought in to replace Clare. When Ivan made it to the final three, he thought Brendan Morais was the front-runner. Zac Clark, however, won the final rose and was engaged to Tayshia for one year before their November 2021 split.
“I definitely did not realize Zac was gonna win — at all. The person actually that I thought she liked the most going through was Brendan,” Ivan says. “That was, like, the person I was like, ‘OK, she’s looking at him a little differently from what I could gather.’ Other than that, I really wasn’t too worried about anybody else. It was a nice surprise to see that. I do know Zac’s a great guy. I’ve had great talks with him while I was out there and became a friend, for sure.”
Ivan notes that he had preliminary talks about a potential gig as the Bachelor, but didn’t take them seriously as Matt James was already lined up for season 26. When it came to going on Bachelor in Paradise, Ivan made headlines for comments made that he would feel “uncomfortable” if Harrison returned as the host amid his controversial defense of Rachael Kirkconnell’s racially insensitive past.
“Everybody took it as like, ‘Ivan’s not going if Chris Harrison’s the host,’” Ivan recalls on the “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast. “And that wasn’t, like, it at all. If he was there, I would’ve still shown up. I would’ve been like, ‘Oh, this is a little weird.’ And since then, it’s all good. Chris gave me a call. People make mistakes.”
He adds that they had “a good conversation,” telling Us, “I appreciated that from him and it was just a very interesting, weird dynamic in Bachelor Nation at that time.”
For more from Ivan, including how he feels about coming under fire for breaking the Bachelor in Paradise “rules” and his time on the beach, listen to Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast.