Jeremy Anderson talks about his 'The Bachelorette' experience

Jeremy Anderson had hoped for answers from DeAnna Pappas during ABC's recent taping of The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All, however he was instead left in the dark.


"What I really wanted to know is that when she let me go, she told me that she knew right away once I told her, 'I'm falling for you.'  She said, 'I knew right then I was going to have to let you go.'  So I asked her during The Men Tell All, 'You told me right then, right when I said that.  So why would you then give me the [Fantasy Suite Card] and spend the night with me?'" Anderson told Reality TV World during a Tuesday interview. 

"She just kind of dodged the question. I never could understand why if she was being honest with me and she didn't want to lead anybody on, why would you do that?  That's the worst kind of lead on you could do -- 'Hey, I don't really want to spend anymore time with you, but I want to spend the night with you.'  That was just very, very off for me."

Anderson said it's not like he wasn't persistent in trying to get the answer he wanted.

"I asked her the question three times and she never understood what I was asking, or never got to the point of what I was asking.  Either I was being confusing or a little vague, or maybe she just didn't know what to say," Anderson told reporters during the call.  "I never got an answer to the question that I was looking for."


The 30-year-old real estate attorney from Dallas, TX said Pappas "seemed a lot different" from the last time he had seen her -- The Bachelorette fourth-season Rose Ceremony that saw his ouster -- to the recent taping of Monday night's The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All special.

"She's normally really, really sweet to everybody and some of the comments she was making on The Men Tell All were very off for her," explained Anderson to Reality TV World. 

"Maybe she was just in a different mood or she's ready to be over with everything.  I don't know.  But she definitely was not her normal overly-nice self.  When she was talking to me, she had always been really sweet to me no matter what.  Last night she was just being very poignant at points when she's usually a little more diplomatic."

Pappas could even be considered diplomatic in the way she showed Anderson the door, describing him as "perfect" and calling herself "stupid" for sending him home before dropping the heart-wrenching bomb that she wasn't in love with him.

"I was sick to my stomach, I just didn't want to throw up," Anderson told reporters about his limousine ride after he failed to receive a rose.  "I was still in shock, that hadn't worn off yet."


Anderson felt like he had an explanation for the "perfect" stigma he received from Pappas, attributing it to The Bachelorette being the first time he's ever been on camera.

"It took me towards the end of the season before I really started to get comfortable.  So in the beginning -- when we weren't around all the crew -- it was a lot easier for me to relax a little bit.  But even still, the situation had me a little nervous.  So I think she never really got to see the full picture," he told Reality TV World.  "What she was calling 'perfect' was me being camera-ready all the time, if you will.  A little nervous, I wasn't too aware of my surroundings.  I think she wanted me to be a little bit more natural, and it took a while for that to happen."

Still, Anderson was an early front runner when he received Pappas' first-impression rose and stayed with her in the mansion for the first two weeks of the competition.

"Her throwing me up there in the front kind of made me take a much more aggressive approach.  I just didn't want it to be me getting comfortable, sitting back," he told Reality TV World.  "If anything me being thrust up there in the front, it actually pushed a lot of the other guys.  They did a lot of things they didn't normally do."

Anderson said he noticed the other guys doing more "little things," such as standing up whenever Pappas entered the room.


"Guys were a lot more respectable," he said.  "The guys stepped up their game towards the end."

While Anderson may have helped Pappas' suitors be a bit more respectable, they weren't exactly gracious to him for it -- giving him terrible nicknames and calling him "tactless."

"I think it was just having fun with it.  They didn't really think that.  Every time they would say it in [confessionals] they would come back and tell me, 'I just called you this.  I was just joking," he told reporters during the conference call. 

"You try to join the guys as much as you can, but in the end you have to remember that it's going to be you against the other guy.  I think it was just the competitive nature of it and me being in the position I was in in the house... It was never meant to be taken seriously."

During Monday night's The Men Tell All special, one of Anderson's staunchest critics during the season -- Ron Mayer -- said it's not like the other guys were "jealous" of Anderson being in Pappas' good graces.  While the special's studio audience laughed at the comment, Anderson had an explanation.


"When he went on the show he was hopeful that something would work out between him and DeAnna, but I know that after meeting with her and all that, he said that he realized that there may not be a connection there," Anderson told Reality TV World. 

"I think he was just meaning from the stand point that he wasn't expecting to wind up with DeAnna in the end.  It was more or less at that point let's see where things went, see if something actually did start to form.  But he was going to have fun with the guys.  Ron took on more of a Papa Smurf role in the house."

One of Anderson's biggest competitors for Pappas' heart right from the start was Graham Bunn, who was eliminated during the Rose Ceremony following the hometown visits.  However instead of Bunn's departure helping Anderson, it actually hurt.

"It definitely made me scared about my status," Anderson told Reality TV World.

Once Bunn left, Pappas said it seemed like Anderson started to hold back more, which is why she got rid of Bunn in the first place.


"It kind of threw off the balance," Anderson told Reality TV World about Bunn's departure.  "The whole time I had seen the chemistry with her and Graham.  When she got rid of him, it just made me question a lot of things and mostly it made me question, 'Well she's getting rid of the guy that I thought was her No. 1.'  The guys were saying it was me and Graham, me and Graham, Jeremy and Graham -- the whole time.  When she gets rid of Graham, there's no more Jeremy and Graham.  There's just Jeremy, and I'm not so sure that Jeremy's going to be around much longer either.  I was right."

While Anderson may have briefly anticipated his ouster, he feels there wasn't much more he could do to show Pappas how he felt.

"I can tell you I did everything I was willing to do," he told Reality TV World.  "You can take that however you want."

Anderson said he found himself on The Bachelorette at the suggestion of an ex-girlfriend.

"She had nominated me for The Bachelor, and it wound up working out to where the timing was good for The Bachelorette, with my bar exam and all that," he said.  "It was a pretty expedited casting process.  They called me and then they came to town and sat down with me and that was pretty much it."

After initial interviews, Anderson said he pondered the idea of appearing on the show.


"It sounded fun, it sounded like a good time," he said.  "I asked them specific questions about the person that they were casting for The Bachelorette because it was very important to me that I go on there and it has an actual chance of working out -- not just going on there to promote myself."

Anderson explained that while he didn't have lofty expectations, he was aware what the possible end result might be.

"There were expectations, there were hopes, there were dreams -- I wouldn't leave my law firm, I wouldn't travel half-way across the country for just some shot at love," he told Reality TV World.  "But I liked what I saw about her, I liked what I heard about her.  I thought this would be a girl who could potentially understand where I come from -- could get the way I think.  In the beginning I didn't have any expectations that would work out, but I definitely felt there was a chance it could work out.  That's what drove me to do it."

While Anderson liked what he saw from Pappas at the start of the season, he told reporters that wasn't the case as the process of her picking a suitor began to come to a close.

"There's a lot of things I've seen of DeAnna -- she let us see what she wanted us to see.  One of the things I got on her about was that she started getting more and more closed off as the season went along," he said.  "So I kind of gave her a hard time about that, especially during The Men Tell All."

As a result, Anderson said he came to realize Pappas wasn't the one for him.


"I think I initially thought this could be the one and that's the reason I allowed myself to feel the things I did and have the discussions that I did and things progressed the way they did," he explained.  "But after watching it and seeing both sides of the coin, you see what you want to see.  In that situation, I very much read into DeAnna the things that weren't there, unfortunately.  But she's a great girl and I wish her all the best."

Pappas' final two suitors are Jason Mesnick and Jesse Csincsak, and Anderson said he has a "good idea" who she'll present her finale rose to after speaking with her at The Men Tell All taping.

"It's pretty clear to me, I don't know how it came across [to viewers].  But she all but told us," he told reporters.  "DeAnna just elaborated on each of the guys and how great each one of them are and just some of the comments she made about each guy just made it painfully obvious to me who she was picking.  She wants a guy that's going to put her No. 1 in his life."

When pressed by reporters, Anderson revealed he was talking about Csincsak.

"He's the only guy that's left that can put her No. 1 in his life," explained Anderson.  "Jason -- I love the guy to death -- but he's got his 3-year-old son.  The best DeAnna can hope for is No. 2 in [Mesnick's] life.  I don't mean that as a knock to Jason, your 3-year-old son should be your focus."

Anderson said Pappas isn't nervous about Mesnick's son, but instead explained she's more concerned with what her "status" would be in a relationship with him.


"If she were in a relationship with Jason, I think it would be tough for her to swallow if she really wants it to be just the two of them," he said.  "I think that would be an issue there.  DeAnna wants the attention, and I think the majority of the attention would be on [Jason's son], which it should be."

While Pappas left Anderson heartbroken, he's already started to pick-up the pieces.

"I have started seeing someone.  It was tough in the beginning, and it was tough to get back out there because you can't really date while the show is going on," he told reporters.  "Once the show was over, I could kind of explore... The dating world in real life is so much different.  It's a different universe to dating on television.  I don't know how much crosses over."

With his love life back on track, Anderson couldn't say the same about his professional life -- as he still hasn't gone back to the law firm he was with before he left for The Bachelorette.

"Everyday is a new day with that.  I haven't talked to my firm today, so I'm sure they'll call me at some point and we'll talk about it," he said.  "It's a very conservative law firm, got to make sure the image is what they feel is appropriate for the firm... I want to go back to practicing law."

Despite airing all of his feelings on television, being mocked and ridiculed by the other suitors, possibly losing his job and being rejected by Pappas, Anderson said he would "definitely do" The Bachelorette again.


"It was a great experience," he said.  "It was probably the most enlightening thing I've ever done. I feel like I took more out of it than anyone.   It was really easy for me in the end to discuss certain matters that in the beginning you couldn't have forced me to open up about.  I think it was a great experience for me and I'm definitely glad I did it."






About The Author: Christopher Rocchio