Cassie Randolph had the Internet buzzing when she broke up with Colton Underwood because her dad was skeptical about their relationship on the March 4 episode of The Bachelor, and that includes Bachelor nation alum, Carly Waddell! The Bachelor in Paradise star hilariously live-tweeted the episode, and we caught up with her afterward to get her full take on the situation — especially regarding why she wasn’t happy with Cassie’s decision to leave Colton the way she did.
“I understand having your parents support is meaningful and nice,” Carly explained to HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY. “But also…they don’t know Colton. They don’t know their relationship. So her dad saying, ‘If you don’t feel this immediately….’ that’s not right.” Cassie’s dad, Matt, actually showed up in Portugal ahead of Cassie and Colton’s Fantasy Suite date and told his daughter that he could tell she wasn’t 100% confident that she was ready to get engaged to Colton. He urged her not to accept a proposal if she had any doubts, and told her that if she wanted to be with Colton forever, she would’ve known it immediately. This was the particular viewpoint that Carly, and many others, took issue with.
Carly, of course, has a firsthand reason for not agreeing with Matt — when she first met her now-husband, Evan Bass, on Bachelor in Paradise, she was not into him AT ALL. “Look where we are [now]!” she said. “I think Cassie’s dad really got in her head. She may have been ‘on the fence,’ and I don’t think her dad being there swayed her in the right direction.”
We got to chat with Evan about the situation, too, and he saw things a bit differently than his wife. “I think she probably had her mind made up for a while that she was going to give him the friend zone talk,” Evan admitted. “She said to one of the producers on the show that she didn’t think it was going to be this hard. I just don’t think she was ready to get a proposal when it came down to it. I think they would probably work in a different setting with more time to figure it out.”
Colton was absolutely devastated when Cassie left him. He told her he was in love with her and that she was the one he wanted to be with, even though he still had two other women, Tayshia Adams and Hannah Godwin, left. Evan told us that he got really “upset” while watching Colton get his heart broken, even though he wasn’t the biggest fan of the football player when the season started. “I really thought Colton was just ‘playing the game,'” Evan revealed. “But it’s crazy how you sort of fall in love with him this season.”
Meanwhile, Carly had nothing but great things to say about Colton as the Bachelor. “We got really sad during the last episode,” she said. “We didn’t know how much we liked Colton until we got really sad. I think he’s done a really good job. He’s so raw and you just don’t get that from a lot of Bachelors. I think it’s beautiful to see a man have emotions and be raw and vulnerable.”
We’ll have to see what happens next for Colton when The Bachelor finale airs on March 11 at 8:00 p.m. on ABC! Last week’s episode ended with him disappearing after jumping over a fence following the breakup, so we still don’t know how he handles things Tayshia and Hannah. Or maybe he’ll just be done with the show for good?! Time will tell!