‘The Bachelor’: Chris Harrison Explains Reason for ‘Awkward’ Fantasy Suite Living Situation Between Final Three Women

“We needed Madison to face Victoria and Hannah Ann and have them express their emotions on this,” says the host

Madison P. The Bachelor
Madison P. on "The Bachelor," Courtesy of ABC

“The Bachelor” host Chris Harrison is spilling the tea on why Peter Weber’s final three women were forced to live together during Fantasy Suite week.

In a conversation with former Bachelorettes Rachel Lindsay and Becca Kufrin on an episode of their Bachelor Happy Hour podcast, Harrison explained the reasoning for the unprecedented decision.

For those not familiar with standard Bachelor Nation practices, Fantasy Suite week is traditionally the first opportunity the contestants get to spend the night with the Bachelor alone and off-camera. By this time in the competition, the remaining contestants have moved out of the Bachelor mansion and are allowed to live by themselves so that they’re kept in the dark about the status of the other relationships. But on Monday night’s episode, producers opted to make the final three contestants, Hannah Ann, Victoria and Madison, stay in the same living quarters together — meaning that they have to awkwardly return home the morning after their date and look each other in the eye knowing that one of them had probably just been intimate with everyone’s communal boyfriend.

Harrison says the move was a necessary one to force Weber’s hand into making a necessary decision.

“There are times when, no matter how great you are — and you both were great Bachelorettes — you can’t get out of your own way. And that’s part of why you’re single,” Harrison told Kufrin and Lindsay. “And Peter, for example, has trouble making decisions. I don’t know if you guys have noticed that,” he laughed.

“He is the king of kicking the can down the road. Heaven forbid you make a decision. So there are things that we do as producers that will force you into this uncomfortable zone and force you into making a decision,” he continued.

“Sometimes we do it for your behalf, sometimes we do it for the guys or the girls. This situation was pretty extraordinary because Peter had kicked the can down the road, but also, this time, also Madison had. And so this was to force a situation that had to happen, and it had to happen this week.”

If you’re not caught up on Weber’s season, the current drama is that Madison, a 23-year-old foster parent recruiter from Auburn, Alabama, has been hiding the fact that she’s saving herself for marriage from her potential beau. Harrison explained that by putting her in such close proximity to the other women who are presumably sexually active, it would expedite her virginity conversation with Weber.

“If we get to proposal week, then this guy is really screwed and there’s no chance this works. We gotta figure this out, and there’s really only one way to do it,” Harrison said. “So yeah, it was tough love, and it was really awkward. As you know, in the history of the show, I don’t know if we’ve ever done this. But we decided to do it this week because these are conversations that needed to be had. And it was because of, I think, the double standard and the things that Peter was going to deal with, we kind of needed the women’s perspective on this. We needed Madison to face Victoria and Hannah Ann and have them express their emotions on this because, again, it’s just this guy and his perspective and I don’t know if that’s the greatest thing right now.”

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