The rumors are true — January Jones, 42, and Nick Viall, 39, totally dated! January is admittedly a huge Bachelor fan, and opened up about her obsession and how it led her to a brief romance with Nick at the beginning of 2018. It all started when she appeared on various talk shows to do recaps of Nick’s season in 2017. “I was just blasting that guy,” January admitted on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. “Nick slid into my DMs and was like, ‘I’m so sorry your perception of me is so negative. I’d love to take you out to coffee and see if I could change your mind.'”
January admitted that she “squealed” when she got the message, and didn’t want to go at all because she “hated” Nick so much. “My sister was like, ‘If you don’t go, you’ll forever regret it,'” she explained. “So I agreed to go on a date with him. As I met him, I was rounding the corner, and I had this instinct to run up and wrap my legs around his waist, like they do [on the show]. But I stopped myself!” In the end, January said that the date with Nick was “good,” and they ended up going on a couple of more dates after that.
“The thing that attracted me to Nick is that he was cast as the ‘villain,’ but he actually had a bit of a brain,” she said. “There was something else there.” Unfortunately, the two didn’t have much to talk about besides The Bachelor, and things fizzled out. However, they’ve remained friends, and January even joined Nick on his podcast to discuss the show’s season 24 premiere on Jan. 6.
Nick has been a staple in Bachelor Nation for many years now. He made his debut on season 10 of The Bachelorette, where he was one of Andi Dorfman’s suitors. His heart was broken at the final rose ceremony, when she chose Josh Murray over him. Then, Nick returned during week four of the show’s next season. He asked that season’s Bachelorette, Kaitlyn Bristowe, if she would give him a chance and let him come on the show, and she agreed. However, he wound up finishing as the runner-up once again.
In 2016, Nick appeared on season three of Bachelor in Paradise, where he dated Jen Saviano, but they split before the show ended. He was then cast as the Bachelor for season 21, and got engaged to Vanessa Grimaldi, but their relationship ended before the end of summer 2017. At the end of that year, he began quietly seeing January, and fans began getting suspicious about their romance thanks to some flirty back-and-forth Instagram comments. Various media outlets reported that something was going on between the two at the time, but now, we have the details straight from January’s mouth!