Emily Maynard is apparently petrified to start filming The Bachelorette's eighth season next month.
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"It really hasn't hit me, what I've signed on to do," the 25-year-old single mom from Charlotte, NC, told People. "I'm scared to death."
Maynard -- the former fifteenth-season The Bachelor bachelorette who got engaged to Brad Womack during the March 2011 broadcast of the show's season finale but split with him several months later -- also feels guilty about going back on her word when she reportedly said she "had no intentions of ever being the next Bachelorette" shortly after her engagement was called off.
"I genuinely meant that," Maynard explained. "I feel like the biggest hypocrite because I said that and now I'm doing it."
However, Maynard justified starring on the upcoming season of the show because she believes her experience on The Bachelor ended successfully although she didn't find a husband.
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"I know it can work," said Maynard, who lost her fiance and former NASCAR driver Ricky Hendrick in an October 2004 plane crash before appearing on Womack's season of The Bachelor.
"I fell in love the first time and no, we didn't end up getting married, but in the end just falling in love, for me, is a success."
The Bachelorette's next season will reportedly film mostly in Charlotte to accommodate Maynard and her six-year-old daughter Josephine Riddick "Ricki" Hendrick, who will be absent from most of the action.
"She's not going to be involved in a lot of filming and certainly not meeting the guys. But she's really excited to go on vacation with Mommy," Maynard explained, adding that she hasn't found love again since Womack because her job as a "full-time mommy" is very time consuming.
"My schedule is very different than a normal single guy's schedule. I can't go out every night of the week. They just kind of fizz out before they ever have a chance to become anything. I have to take things slowly because I have a daughter, so that makes it really hard."
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski