Ashley Iaconetti has addressed Maria Georgas' theory that she and Nick Viall had influence over Joey Graziadei's The Bachelor season and plotted to make Maria look like the villain.
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Maria and Sydney Gordon memorably feuded on The Bachelor's 28th season. Sydney had called Maria a catty and manipulative "bully," and Maria felt unfairly attacked.
Joey made the decision to eliminate Sydney during a two-on-one date with Maria, and then several other women in the house targeted Maria in Sydney's defense.
"So [Maria] has this strange theory that me and Nick were in on trying to create a villain out of [her]," Ashley acknowledged during the Wednesday, May 1 episode of "The Ben and Ashley I: Almost Famous Podcast."
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER?? (PHOTOS)
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Ashley insisted "no" that's not true because she "didn't even know Maria" prior to Joey's The Bachelor season. Ashley, however, was in fact friends with Sydney, and the women often cross paths in Rhode Island.
"Maria has this conspiracy theory that Nick and I got together with Sydney, we brought Sydney to production, and we were like, 'Hey, this is our friend Sydney. She'd be great to take down the villain... of this season,'" Ashley explained to her podcast co-host Ben Higgins.
"The reason she had this little suspicion is because there's a picture of Sydney, Nick and I from, I think, September 2022, when Nick came to [my coffee shop called Audrey's] for a book signing and Sydney was Audrey's social media coordinator, and she took... a quick picture with Nick."
Ashley also said she had taken her pal Nick and his new wife, Natalie Joy, to Sydney's vintage clothing store in Newport, RI, where they "may have taken" another picture with Sydney.
Ashley told her listeners that's all there was to it.
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"Nick and Sydney had not spoken -- and have not spoken -- since this event in September 2022. He has absolutely no relationship with Sydney," Ashley insisted.
"So if you're wondering why Nick would even care about bringing Maria down in any way, supposedly the two of them spoke in a flirty way years and years ago before he and Natalie were together. It was DMing. I don't know if they ever met in real life."
Ashley reiterated how, in Maria's "conspiracy" theory, Nick had "wanted to make sure" that Maria was the villain and so he "hired this girl, Sydney, for the producers to bring her down."
Ashley laughed at such a scheme and told Ben, "It's not an accurate theory whatsoever. Nick does not know Sydney. In fact, Nick thought Sydney was absolutely ridiculous on the show and called me to talk about how she is in real life."
Ashley also said the first time she heard about Maria was when Sydney returned home from filming The Bachelor in late 2023 and told her about a girl named Maria on the show.
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Maria shared on the April 30 episode of the "Call Her Daddy" podcast that Nick, whom she said she has known since 2017, had told her years ago that if she ever appeared on The Bachelor, she'd probably be at the center of drama.
Maria recalled having "a good thing going" and a flirty banter with Nick at one point, although "nothing ever happened" romantically between them and they never hooked up.
"I remember -- and I never really understood it, until actually being on the show -- he had said to me, 'I can see you being the villain.' He was like, 'You're going to go on, and you're going to be the villain.' And I was like, 'Why?! Why me?'" Maria claimed.
"It's funny because after I finished filming, there were rumors about me being a villain. And I was like, 'But I wasn't! I know what happened!'"
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Maria told "Call Her Daddy" host Alex Cooper that when Joey's The Bachelor season first started airing in early 2024, someone sent her a photo of Nick and Sydney together.
"Nick is close with Ashley, and Ashley is close with Sydney. They were all in a photo together, and so I was like, 'Was this planned?!' I'm not kidding. I'm a straight shooter... Part of me was like, 'Was this all planned?' Because I knew I was innocent," Maria said.
Maria noted that when all the drama was airing on The Bachelor and she discovered that Sydney "was friends with Nick," she questioned the show's authenticity.
"I was like, 'There is something conspiring here!'" Maria admitted.
"I'm not kidding. This is my exact thought process. I was like, 'There is something weird about all of this because it was too close to home.'"
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On Ben and Ashley's "Almost Famous" podcast, Ben laughed about how, if Ashley had really been the mastermind because this alleged plan, it was actually a big failure on Ashley's part because Maria was the one who came out of Joey's The Bachelor season smelling like a rose.
"Maria has kind of shined and taken off from this experience," Ben said, noting how Sydney actually turned out to be the villain from her feud with Maria and received a lot of hate and backlash on social media.
"I would expect you, [Ashley], to be a lot better at planning a conspiracy," Ben joked. "You'd be pretty good at it. You could really think it through. You're a gamer, and this one was not thought through."
While Ashley playfully called herself a "mastermind," she insisted The Bachelor producers are the true puppet masters pulling the strings.
"They get paid to actually be masterminds," Ben added. "They get paid big bucks for it."
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Regardless of whether Sydney or Maria was the true villain on The Bachelor this year, Maria revealed on "Call Her Daddy" that she and Sydney are on good terms now.
"We hugged it out. We're good," Maria told Alex, before adding, "Because I know she is a good person, deep down, I think that again, in this environment, it just brought out the worst."
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER?? (PHOTOS)
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