Rozlyn Papa: 'Bachelor' producer relationship was "nothing romantic"

After previously denying that her relationship with a The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love producer was sexual, ousted bachelorette Rozlyn Papa is now saying it wasn't even romantic.


"I really, really liked the producer in a producer sort of way. He's awesome. He's funny. But there was nothing romantic about it at all," Papa said during an interview on Monday night's Entertainment Tonight broadcast.

Papa's claim that the relationship was not romantic appear to conflict with her initial response when The Bachelor host Chris Harrison confronted her about what he termed an "inappropriate relationship" during last night's broadcast.

"So you think there's not other girls here that felt for other people before they came on the show?" Papa asked Harrison during the broadcast.

"No, not at all," he replied. "There wasn't a relationship that you had back home. There wasn't a boyfriend that you broke up with and then came on the show to start anew. It's something that just happened on our show with someone who works on the show."


Last night's The Bachelor broadcast concluded with the 28-year-old model/makeup artist from Richmond, VA being eliminated from the competition due to the allegations despite the fact that she had already received a rose from Jake Pavelka as part of a previous group date.

"At that point, honestly, I was so disgusted with how things were going -- not that I didn't care -- I just wanted to go home and I wanted to see my son," she told Entertainment Tonight about the way she reacted during the episode.

Papa also reiterated her previous denials that the relationship had involved any sex.

"I made good decisions on that show, I feel. I did not choose to have sex with somebody else," she told Entertainment Tonight correspondent Kevin Frazier.

"Is there anything that could be termed inappropriate?" asked Frazier.


"Inappropriate basically means that it was an inappropriate relationship between a producer and a cast member," she replied. "Not a sexual relationship, not even a romantic relationship -- but one that's going to harm the show."

While it had stopped short of directly terming the relationship sexual, ABC had been hyping the incident as a "shocking scandal" and made heavy use of a sound bite in which another bachelorette called it a "sexual affair" in on-air commercials and online promotional clips.

Papa said ABC is "absolutely insinuating" that she engaged in a sexual relationship with a producer -- and she knows why.

"They want the ratings, and that's what they're getting," she said on Entertainment Tonight. "My opinion is that it comes down to sort of a moral dilemma. At what point does somebody say that this show's ratings are more important that my life?"

Papa added that she feels "absolutely betrayed by the show" and is mostly concerned with how the allegations will impact her relationship with her 7-year-old son.


"Why would you go on national television and throw a mom under the bus like that?" she asked.

"This seeps into my personal life. I have a 7-year-old little boy at home that I want to look up to me and to have this very blatant lie out there -- and for it to be perpetuated by the show itself -- it's hurtful. It's scary, it's scary thinking about what my son will think of me. It disgusted me. This is a mom and her child -- this is not a storyline. This is not for you to taint with your garbage."

Papa said watching promos leading up to the episode would have been confusing had she not known they were talking about her.

"I would have been like, 'Oh, who's having a sexual affair?' I would have had no idea. I would have thought that it was something else in the show," she said.

"It makes you wonder what they told the girls after I left. They didn't give me a chance to say goodbye to the girls, they didn't give me a chance to talk to Jake."


While Papa claims she never spoke with Pavelka after her ouster, he apparently feels he has a good understanding of the situation surrounding her elimination.

"All of the rumors are true and one of the bachelorettes entered into an inappropriate relationship with one of the staff members," Pavelka told Frazier during a Friday interview.

Papa said it "infuriates" her that the producer lost his job over the alleged incident and adamantly denied that the relationship she had with him helped her during her short stint on the show.

"I did not get any preferential treatment," she said. "It was nothing like that at all."

In addition, Papa also claims that The Bachelor's producers broke an agreement to let her speak with her son daily and pressured her to not tell Jake about him.


"ABC told me I could bring my son to the show to visit and that I could talk about him each day on the show. But then they didn't let me," she told Radar Online in a separate interview.

"The other girls on the show all knew about my son and ABC kept telling me to hold off and not tell Jake about him yet. At that point all the other girls knew I had a son and they were spending time alone with Jake and it looked like I was hiding the information."






About The Author: Christopher Rocchio