The Bachelor bachelorettes and beauty pageant queens Hannah Brown and Caelynn Miller-Keyes have been stabbing each other in the back in recent episodes, and now a couple of Miss USA insiders are shedding some light on how their feud allegedly got started.
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Hannah and Caelynn are both competing for Colton Underwood's heart on The Bachelor's 23rd season, but this isn't the first time the ladies have been in a competition against one another.
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They both fought to win the crown of Miss USA 2018, before which Hannah had won the title of Miss Alabama and Caelynn had been crowned Miss North Carolina.
Unfortunately for Hannah, she didn't place in the Top 15 for Miss USA, but Caelynn finished as the runner-up.
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The Bachelor has portrayed Hannah as a jealous gossip queen out for revenge -- the one who started all the drama -- but two sources claim Caelynn is not a victim in the situation, according to New York magazine's Vulture entertainment news website.
Austin Ryde, a makeup artist and photographer who has worked with numerous Miss USA contestants, had been friends with Caelynn for nearly a decade before they had a recent falling out.
"I never met Hannah, but the way Hannah describes Caelynn [on the show] is exactly how I would describe her," Austin told Vulture, clearly backing Hannah in the feud.
Austin said there wasn't one "incident" that severed the women's friendship but it was more a matter of their "personalities clashing" after the 2018 pageant ended.
"When Miss USA was over, Caelynn came to stay with me and my girlfriend in Los Angeles," Austin recalled.
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"She had just gotten a text from Hannah, which I saw. I can't recall the exact wording, but the general idea of the text was Caelynn made it a very difficult time for Hannah at Miss USA, and Hannah, in a very nice but direct way, said, 'Congratulations, you placing so high is a huge deal, but I need you to know you weren't a nice person and not very positive, and that took away from my experience.' That was the falling out."
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Austin therefore believes Caelynn's off-camera personality matches Hannah's description.
Hannah has been shown telling Colton that Caelynn is "fake" and full of lies. She also used the word "hostile" when explaining what the Miss USA environment was like with Caelynn participating.
On the contrary, Caelynn has accused Hannah B. of "manipulation, deceitfulness and talking bad" about her.
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"It's unfortunate that people are assuming Hannah is just jealous -- I should clarify, she might be, you never know. I don't think she's overreacting, but she made a big mistake being the first person to say something, because that's always the first person to get in trouble," Austin told Vulture.
A third Miss USA contestant who competed alongside Hannah B. and Caelynn in the 2018 pageant also expressed her thoughts on the drama, although she wished to remain anonymous.
"My roommate at Miss USA was good friends with both of them. One of them would come into my room all the time talking bad about the other girl while I was trying to sleep," the pageant queen told Vulture.
"The feud didn't start because Caelynn was the first runner-up, that has nothing to do with it. That's a topic that [The Bachelor] producers are taking and running with. That's literally the complete opposite of how it really went down."
The unidentified pageant queen, like Austin, apparently believes Caelynn was to blame for her crumbled friendship and now-contentious relationship with Hannah B.
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"I think Colton is kind of stupid if he can't really see the difference between the two. One is genuine and completely herself, and the other is manipulative," the former Miss USA contestant explained.
The source also claimed Hannah B. and Caelynn knew each other before rooming together at the pageant.
"At the end of the day, Miss USA is a competition. We all know one girl wins. It's not as catty as the producers on The Bachelor are making it seem to be," said the source.
"I think Hannah and Caelynn have known each other for a very, very long time and it started way before that. It started way before the competition. The producers are making Hannah look crazy, and she's not. She's just goofy."
While Colton has expressed he's not sure which girl he should believe on The Bachelor, Caelynn seems to have the edge because Hannah only survived the previous Rose Ceremony by a thin thread.
Hannah therefore cried to the cameras in last week's episode, "I was the last one called for a rose, which is scary... I don't deserve all this stuff being said about me. I just never thought this would ever happen to me. This is not fair. I f-cking hate her."
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski