Jake Pavelka, 32, will hand out his final rose (or maybe not!) on Monday’s season finale of The Bachelor on ABC. He spoke with PEOPLE exclusively about the last two ladies, Vienna and Tenley, in the running to become his co-pilot, Rozlyn-gate and whether he is happy with the outcome of his second reality TV trip. --Carrie Bell
Your season caused a lot of drama for ABC. I guess it did, but I saved them a bunch of money on the alcohol budget. I’m not a big drinker and the women followed my lead. That was pretty neat to see. Everything is more real and honest when aren’t sloppy. I’m not the kind of guy who seeks out drama but sometimes it finds me.
The biggest scandal was obviously the alleged Rozlyn/producer hookup. How’d you feel about her Women Tell All segment? Wow, true colors. I can understand being a little bitter, but these are consequences of the decisions you made. I don’t respect her trying to place blame on the show or calling them liars or acting inappropriately toward Chris Harrison who is happily married. I felt bad for his wife. It made for great TV, but it was very hard for me. I understand it as a storyline but were shocked behind the scenes. She rid the show of a high-level producer in the process.
Are you angry at her? You can’t help who you fall in love with. All I wanted was for her to be honest. Don’t take roses that could be given to someone who is interested. Tell me what happened and get out of the way of my love life. I took a lot of crap when I said I got cheated on. But how had I not been cheated on? Had I gone for a staffer, I would have been labeled a cheater. She came to meet me and agreed to be one of the 25 women. I can’t believe she couldn’t keep her head in the game for six weeks. It is not a surprise that I am going to be dating multiple women. That is the premise of the show. Also the staffer was supposed to be helping me make my choices. But I have moved on. There’s no ill will towards either of them.
Are they still together? I don’t know honestly. I really hope they are in love.
More importantly, are you in love and is there a wedding in your future? Marriage in my future? Hopefully. I can’t say whether it will come from someone I met on the show, but that is a life experience I don’t want to miss out on. And I would like to have it soon. That’s why I did the show in the first place.
Let me rephrase: Are you happy with your final decision? I just hope that everybody understands the decision I made because I’m the one who has to live with it. The show will keep going, another season will get under way and the public will move on to being obsessed with another person’s budding romance, but my life will keep going so I tried to make the best decision I could, the one that I could live with. I still feel like I made the right decision now a few months later. I’m happy because of that.
The final two seem like complete opposites. Everyone says they’re apples and oranges, but they really aren’t. They are more like an orange and a tangerine. The way they express love is very different but when you get them down to their cores, they’re exactly the same girl. I think will probably see that by the end. That was comforting to me actually because it would be strange if I had fallen hard for two opposites. Both of the women are fun and have a ton of energy and big hearts. Vienna and I connected fiercely over conquering our fear of bungee jumping together. Tenley has been hurt before but has done a great job of being unguarded and showing me who she is like when she danced for me. They have the same family values. They just express them differently.
Were you concerned about Vienna butting heads with the other women? Vienna got a raw deal from the girls. When other girls I knew cared about me were telling me that she was horrible, I gave it some thought. I wanted to know why but no one ever told me a valid reason to question her. Obviously I saw something. I finally said, “We’re worrying too much about what other think and are wasting the time we could be getting to know each other better.”
Craig Sjodin/ABC
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