The Bachelor star Colton Underwood has denied Cassie Randolph's recent claims he planned to profit off their breakup while expecting Cassie to keep quiet and maintain privacy.
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Colton and Cassie's feud began on Monday, when Cassie conducted a brief virtual interview with Chris Harrison on The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons -- Ever!. While she was asked repeatedly about her split from Colton, Cassie declined to reveal details.
But Colton clearly felt slighted because he took a dig at Cassie on Thursday via Instagram.
"When our relationship ended we agreed to handle things as privately as possible as we attempted to navigate our new relationship as friends," Colton wrote.
"I chose to do that since we were living in this interim period, but obviously a lot changed this week."
An offended Cassie subsequently fired back on her Instagram Stories and essentially blasted the Season 23 The Bachelor star, whom she had dated for about 18 months before the pair announced their split on May 29.
Although Cassie stated she didn't want to start "an online petty war," she wrote, "As some of you may know, I did a GOAT interview this week -- I purposely remained private and vague out of respect for Colton & our relationship... Colton, your last Instagram post saddened me, but also left me frustrated."
"It seems you are subtly engaging in a tactic that peppers in passive aggressive comments such as 'that obviously changed this week' in order to make me look like the bad one. I would like to place on public record & ask you politely to refrain from discussing our relationship, as we agreed."
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Cassie then dug a little deeper and made her accusations about Colton trying to make money off of their failed relationship.
"On Monday evening, you informed me you intend to monetize our breakup by writing a new chapter to discuss your experience with COVID (where you stayed in my family's house during your recovery) & about our break up," Cassie claimed.
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"You have also refused to give me any sort of approval on the chapter that you will be writing, which will heavily feature me... This seems a bit unfair to me. Colton, you can do what you want, but please do not have a double standard."
Cassie went on to say to Colton in her Thursday-night post, "I ask you again on public record to refrain from prolonging our break up, or dragging me, when we both know it's unwarranted. Neither of us, or anyone close to us, would have ever predicted that I would have to write this post."
"Again, I can't control your actions but I sincerely hope we can both move forward in peace," she added. "Thanking you in advance. I would prefer this to now be the end of this. I wish you nothing but the best & hope you can move on peacefully and successfully."
Cassie claimed earlier this week she had initially agreed to do the interview with Harrison under the impression she wouldn't have to speak on her May 2020 split from Colton at all.
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When Harrison questioned Cassie about why she and Colton had decided to end things, Cassie replied, "It's kind of a sensitive subject because I feel like we're still kind of going through it and it's still pretty emotional for both of us."
"And we haven't really talked about it publicly yet, and I don't know if either of us is ready," Cassie said, adding that it's been "really hard" to go through a breakup in the public eye.
"I mean, I've never gone through any of this before, so it was kind of hard to navigate it. We're on good terms and hanging in there."
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"If you watched the interview, I said absolutely nothing -- like, absolutely nothing. That's not what it was about. That's not what it was supposed to be about," Cassie argued in her Instagram Stories.
"Believe it or not," she later noted, "there's so much more to me than just my past relationship, and I think that's why I'm annoyed."
Just last week, Cassie admitted she's had an "awful few months" since parting ways from Colton and she felt the need to delete her Instagram account for a month because criticism and judgment from fans got to be too much for her.
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In terms of why Colton and Cassie split, Cassie reportedly initiated the conversation and a source recently told E! News, "Cassie was just not as ready for the settled-down life Colton wants right now and she tried to end it a few times."
A People insider shared a similar explanation for what went wrong, saying Cassie wasn't ready to get married and the pair had essentially just become friends.
Prior to their surprising decision to part ways, Colton had publicly discussed proposing marriage to Cassie and spending the rest of his life with her.
"We have decided we're not moving in together until we're married. So we have something to look forward to in that step," Colton said on the March 31 episode of Us Weekly's "Here for the Right Reasons" podcast, adding that Cassie has been extremely busy with work and school.
"She still has her internship and some time to put into that and it takes a lot of work for her to do that and takes a lot of her energy and focus. I can't imagine having to plan for a wedding and we still don't want a long engagement. So we want to make sure that timing-wise it's all right."
In addition, Colton had said on the podcast he and Cassie were definitely "up for" more reality TV.
"We've both talked about that and we're very hopeful that something might happen. We don't know, but we're definitely onboard with it. I understand the risks involved... but we both like and enjoy being on-camera. I don't see anything wrong with saying that," Colton shared.
"We like opening up when we can and when we feel it's appropriate, so we wouldn't mind it."
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In his new memoir, The First Time, Colton admitted he and Cassie briefly split and went their separate ways in August 2019, People reported.
"To put it very frank, after the show, we realized we weren't communicating as well as we once did," Colton revealed in the book that was published in March.
"Nobody was forcing us to talk about real things going on, so we let a lot of things build up... In a weird way, I kind of broke up with myself. I was like, I feel like we need to figure this out and in order to do that, we need space. She agreed. So it was a mutual thing."
Colton became a member of Bachelor Nation when he competed for Becca Kufrin's heart on The Bachelorette's fourteenth season in 2018.
After failing to win her heart, he gave Bachelor in Paradise a shot but then went on to become The Bachelor's Season 23 star.
When Colton starred on The Bachelor, his season ended prematurely when he fell in love with and selected Cassie over his other two remaining bachelorettes, Tayshia Adams and Hannah Godwin.
Colton had made up his mind before even finishing out his round of overnight Fantasy Suite dates.
However, Cassie attempted to quit The Bachelor at that stage in the process because she didn't feel ready to get engaged after dating Colton for such a short period of time.
Colton nearly ended production because he was so devastated, but he fought for Cassie to stay and ultimately convinced her to give him another chance.
Cassie was hesitant to continue but decided to stick around for Colton now that pressure of an engagement was off the table, and then she proceeded to meet his family on the show and fall in love with him once filming wrapped.
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
