Peter Weber was left in “complete shock” when former Bachelorette Hannah Brown — who had cut the pilot before her two final rose candidates — returned on his The Bachelor season’s opening night after all of his other contestants had arrived. And seeing the former Miss Alabama again and reliving their intense chemistry — hot windmill sex anyone? — almost caused him to choose her and send the rest of the 30 ladies competing for his heart home. He even told Hannah he was willing to depart the show right then and there and give an actual relationship with the beauty queen a try, which viewers didn’t get to see.
“I remember the first time that she showed up on my season was the first night with all the limos,” the 29-year-old pilot said on Us Weekly’s Here for the Right Reasons podcast. “That limo showed up and it just sat there for, like, 15-20 minutes. No one got out. And I’m just standing there. No one’s coming up to me — obviously, they don’t show this part. But I’m just, like, there waiting, like, ‘OK, when’s the door gonna open? What kind of surprise is it gonna be?’ No producers are coming up to me or anything,” he explained.
“At first I was like, ‘There’s no way that’s Hannah, like, there’s no way.’ [I thought] it was a look-alike. I thought it was just this gorgeous girl…and then I realized her smile. That bright smile, like, that’s Hannah Brown, holy s—t,” he told Us. Viewers were then treated to a raw conversation between the two, where Hannah returned the pilot’s wings that he had given her during her Bachelorette season. But what they didn’t see was that Peter was willing to walk away from being the Bachelor to pursue a relationship with Hannah.
“I was an idiot, producers probably hated me, but I literally, like, I think they edited this part out, I was like, ‘I’m gonna leave the show, like, if you want to, if you want to give this a shot, I’ll leave right now,’” Pilot Pete recalled. “And she’s like, ‘You can’t do that, Peter, you’re the Bachelor, you signed a contract.’ I’m like, ‘No, like, I’ll do it. What are they gonna do to me?’…I don’t know what I was thinking that day. I was very confused.”
“I am very in touch with my feelings…and I know when I’m feeling something and when I’m not and I was just kind of going off of what I was feeling there. Maybe I was a little too impulsive,” he revealed on the podcast. In the end, Peter ended up sending Hannah home. But considering how incredibly messy his season turned out, giving a romance with Hannah a shot might have actually been a wise decision.
Our lives kind of separated there,” Peter said of Alabama Hannah, 26, who is now dating hunky model Adam Woolard. “You know, I’m super happy for her. I see she’s in an awesome relationship and she seems super happy. So that just makes me super happy. And she’s an amazing person. And I’ve got nothing but great things to say about her.”
Hannah Brown jokes around with Peter Weber during their first face-to-face after breaking up during her season as ‘The Bachelorette.’ Photo credit: ABC.
On The Bachelor, Peter was shown getting engaged to Hannah Ann Sluss, even thought he was in love with his other finalist Madison Prewett, who ended up sending herself home. He got down on one knee when his engagement to Hannah Ann took place in November 2019 and told the 24-year-old, “My heart chooses you forever. I love you, Hannah Ann. The love that you have shown me is all that I have ever wanted and I never want to let you go.” But the couple split in Jan. 2020 when Peter dumped Hannah Ann because he still had feelings for Madison, which was later shown to viewers in Mar. 2020. In the end though, Peter and Madi mutually decided not to pursue a relationship.
Hannah Ann even made reference to Hannah B. when she and Peter came face to face on After the Finale Rose. “I should’ve really picked up on the first red flag you gave me — that you wanted to reach out to Hannah Brown to find closure with her. So really, looking back on it, our engagement involved three women: Me, you still being in love with Madison, and you needing closure with Hannah Brown.” Maybe Peter should have stuck with that initial impulse and just run off with Hannah B. during his first episode and saved the other women so much heartbreak. Peter later began dating one of his former contestants Kelley Flanagan — who he had sent home in week seven — in May 2020, but they split up seven months later.