The Bachelorette alum Hannah Brown says she likes former The Bachelor star Colton Underwood better as a gay man.
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Hannah appeared on SiriusXM's "The Michelle Collins Show" earlier this week to promote her memoir, God Bless This Mess: Learning to Live and Love Through Life's Best (and Worst) Moments, and touched upon her feelings about Colton now that he's an out-and-proud gay man.
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Hannah, who competed on Colton's edition of The Bachelor, Season 23, confirmed that she has watched the former pro football player's new docu-reality series, Coming out Colton, on Netflix.
"I honestly think I like him better as a gay man," said Hannah, who later starred on The Bachelorette's fifteenth season.
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"Even though it's obvious that he's still almost like uncomfortable with this new life, [because] he has never allowed himself to be who he is."
The former Dancing with the Stars winner noted "it is cool" to watch Colton be "his most authentic self for the first time."
Hannah, however, acknowledged how she understands why there are critics out there and people angry about Colton's coming-out platform considering he had harassed and stalked his The Bachelor winner, Cassie Randolph.
"So I don't know. I have a lot of different views on it," Hannah continued, "but ultimately I'm all about people understanding more of who they are and growing and not being just defined by all their past mistakes."
Cassie had filed a restraining order against Colton in September 2020 followed by a police report the following month.
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Colton had allegedly put a tracking device on Cassie's car, sent her "unsettling" text messages, and would stand outside her apartment or her parents' house very late at night.
Colton later told multiple press outlets Cassie ultimately dropped the restraining order after they were able to reach an agreement in private that addressed Cassie's concerns.
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"I think there's two sides to it," Hannah explained.
"I understand why people would be upset that he has a TV show, just because he's a white, gay man and there's some privilege there, and I also understand [that with] his relationship with Cassie, I think he definitely made a lot of mistakes."
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But the former Alabama beauty queen reasoned, "As far as knowing him as a person, I think it's really cool that he's finally being able to, for the first time, be himself, which is weird that I'm saying that [because] I dated him and he was gay the whole time."
But Hannah apparently sensed something was off while filming The Bachelor in late 2018.
Hannah, for instance, wrote in her book that she "kept getting the feeling that something was off" while dating Colton, like he "didn't even want to be kissing me," according to Us Weekly.
Hannah admitted she had ignored her gut instinct because Colton checked off all of her boxes and seemed perfect on paper.
Hannah also recalled Colton reassuring her and giving her words of affirmation whenever she'd question their connection on the show, which aired in early 2019 on ABC.
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Hannah shared how finding out Colton is gay more than two years later "helped" her to understand why something had been lacking in their romance.
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"[I] better understand why things just felt a little off between us -- because he felt off with himself," Hannah shared in her memoir. "He wasn't living the truth."
And Hannah told Michelle Collins that "a lot of the girls" could tell something wasn't right with Colton, whom ABC presented as "The Virgin Bachelor," during his season.
"[We thought,] 'No, surely he's not gay. He's the Bachelor.' You're like, 'Okay, maybe he's just not what we thought he was gonna be.' You know? And that is the case a lot of times for reality TV," Hannah explained.
"You don't really know the full person. And so I was like, 'Oh, well I just misjudged [who] I thought I was going to meet,' [and I was] trying to drop down the expectations, but it all makes so much more sense with just who he was and the mirage."
Colton selected Cassie as his The Bachelor winner over Tayshia Adams and Hannah Godwin, and they dated for about 18 months before announcing their split in May 2020.
Colton's Netflix series, Coming Out Colton, debuted December 3 and featured Colton confronting the mistakes of his past, including how he had misled his The Bachelor contestants.
Colton admitted in the footage, "The reason I'm coming out is because I'm ashamed and sort of mortified for what got me to this position in the first place. I put a poor girl through hell of my own insecurities."
Colton previously said on Good Morning America, the show on which he chose to come out in April, he realized he was different at the age of six and came to the conclusion he's gay when he was a freshman in high school.
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Colton called himself "a miserable person living as a shell of a human being" while pretending to be straight for well over a decade.
Not only did he star on The Bachelor, but Colton also competed for Becca Kufrin's heart on The Bachelorette's fourteenth season and dated Tia Booth on Bachelor in Paradise's fifth edition.
After coming out as gay on GMA, Colton revealed to Variety he had experimented sexually with men prior to appearing on Becca's season of The Bachelorette in 2018, which preceded his Bachelor in Paradise and The Bachelor stints.
Colton disclosed that he had a few sexual encounters with men when he was in his twenties but never had sex with a man or woman prior to his time on The Bachelor franchise.
"When I say 'hookups,' not sex," confirmed Colton, who had met these men under a false name in 2016 or 2017 through Grindr, a gay dating app. "I want to make that very clear that I did not have sex with a man, prior to that."
In special GMA footage that aired April 15 on ABC's Nightline, Colton revealed that he hadn't spoken to Cassie "at all" about his decision to come out as gay. She apparently had no warning or heads up before the public was made aware of his sexuality.
"I don't know if I ever will get the chance to sit down and talk with her. I would like to," Colton said at the time. "I would like to say sorry for how things ended. I messed up. I made a lot of bad choices."
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He continued, "I made mistakes at the end of that relationship and I ruined the good memories we had by my actions and what I did to hold on to being straight because I didn't want to look myself in the mirror. So for that, I'm extremely, extremely sorry."
Despite being attracted to men during the course of their relationship, Colton confirmed he was definitely in love with Cassie, which made acknowledging he's gay and his decision to come out to his family and the public even "harder and more confusing" for him.
"If I'm being very honest, I loved everything about her and it's hard for me to articulate what my emotions were in going through that relationship with her because I obviously had an internal fight going on," Colton explained on GMA.
"I would just say that I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart. I'm sorry for the pain and emotional stress I caused. I wish it wouldn't have happened the way it did."
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Colton added, "I wish I would have been courageous enough to fix myself before I broke anybody else... Do I regret handling [The Bachelor] the way that I did? I do. I do think I could've handled it better... I just wish I didn't drag people into my own mess of figuring out who I was."
Colton is now dating and in love with political strategist Jordan C. Brown, and Cassie is head over heels for boyfriend and musician Brighton Reinhardt.
As for Hannah, she has been romantically involved with model Adam Woolard for almost a year now.
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