The show must go on, even if it's just a podcast.
It's been nearly two years since Chris Harrison's last episode of The Bachelor, but the former ABC host is now telling all on The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever.
The first two episodes premiered Jan. 9 and are all about what he's learned since losing his jobs hosting The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise. Jesse Palmer, Emmanuel Acho, Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe each stepped in to perform hosting duties to varying degrees in his wake.
Before inviting his fiancée Lauren Zima to join him as his first-ever guest, Harrison namedropped Mike Johnson, Nick Viall and Chris Soules as past stars who reached out to him to celebrate the podcast news.
That's when he dropped the bombshell about who he thought should've gotten his job: Wells Adams!
"Wells was in a very difficult situation, because obviously he was still connected to the show and he doing stuff on Paradise, but he was one of the first to reach out to me and say, 'Hey, look, I'm staying out of this. I love you, respect you,'" Harrison claimed. "I appreciated that, I appreciated him because if anybody had sights on the job, it easily was Wells."
"I thought, to be completely candid, that Wells was going to get the job," he continued. "I thought that was the easiest call since Ken Jennings got the Jeopardy! job. He's in the family, everybody loves him, it just seemed like a lay-up, but that's not how it went down."
Harrison infamously stepped down as the face of Bachelor Nation in June 2021 following his racism controversy with Rachael Kirkconnell. "By excusing historical racism, I defended it," he admitted in his initial apology to fans and Rachel Lindsay.
The two-part Most Dramatic Podcast Ever premiere also touched upon Harrison's regrets around how he handled the fallout after 19 years on TV, the immediate reaction from fans and how his exit affected his relationship with Zima. The podcast is available through iHeart.
Season 27 of The Bachelor with Zach Shallcross premieres Jan. 23 on ABC.