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The Bachelors' Jasmine reveals surprising unseen moment: 'Bombshell'
Jasmine says there was more to her dramatic Bachelor swap that viewers didn't get to see.
While the 30 women appearing on this year’s season of The Bachelors were all given the option to swap between the three leading men Jed McIntosh, Felix Von Hofe and Thomas Malucelli, only one contestant decided to go through with it.
24-year-old Jasmine Absolom, who had a fiery feud with Tash Candyce during her time in the mansion, made the surprising decision in week one to reject Jed’s rose and accept Thomas’ instead.
Viewers only saw a glimpse of Jasmine and Thomas’ conversation before the rose ceremony began, which appeared to show Thomas turning down Jasmine’s proposal to pursue a romantic relationship, and were therefore stunned when he offered her a rose.
Chatting with Yahoo Lifestyle about the dramatic moment, Jasmine reveals there was much more context around Thomas’ decision that never aired on TV.
“It was actually quite funny to watch back,” she remarks. “Just before we were having that conversation, he had just been told about Kiki having kids and he just got told about Marnie having kids, and we all know how he feels about children!
“So he obviously had a few big shocks, and then he also had Leah telling him how she felt in the house and how her emotions were going. So I think for him at that moment it was like bombshell, bombshell, bombshell, and then I pulled him away and went, ‘Oi, here's another one, enjoy this bombshell’, and he freaked out a little bit.”
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Jasmine went on to say that she and Thomas had a completely different conversation later in the cocktail party which viewers didn’t get to see but would’ve provided further context.
“I was just chatting with the girls and thinking about telling Jed I was gonna go home and I wanted to leave, and Thomas came and found me and pulled me aside,” she recalls.
“He was like, ‘I really want to give this a go. I was thinking with my head, not my heart. I was taken aback by all of these bombshells and then you did that so it took me back by surprise and I wasn’t really thinking clearly, but I wanted to give it a go’.
“So it wasn't as shocking to me watching it back like everyone else. I understand when you see it you’re like, ‘How did you go from that to that? That doesn’t make any sense’. But there were conversations prior to me getting the rose and pursuing that connection.”
'I definitely had a bit of a disadvantage'
When it came to building a connection with Thomas after swapping Bachelors, Jasmine admits it was “really hard” being on a different level to the other women.
“I'm not gonna lie, it was definitely hard,” she says. “You need to go into it being like, okay, I made the choice and now I'm going to explore this as much as I can. But also, I am very well aware that the other girls are not going to be happy if I'm taking time away from him, especially because I'm not 'meant to be in their group’.
“It was like a fine line of, don’t piss everybody off, but also try to take as much time as you can because you didn't get as much as the other girls. So I definitely had a bit of a disadvantage.”
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Although she didn’t end up finding love with Thomas, Jasmine says she walked away from the show with plenty of positives.
“I have a big group of friends that I'm still really, really close with now and we chat all the time, we go out for dinner, we go out for drinks, and we have a really good friendship,” she says.
“I really cherish it, because I think there's nobody else in the world that will know what you went through in that house apart from the girls that were in that house. So you're always going to have that sort of connection with those people.”
As for her current relationship with ‘rival’ Tash, Jasmine says the biggest lesson she’s learned in recent weeks is that “actions speak louder than words”
“If people want to dig their own holes they absolutely can,” she shares. “And I just don't want to be dragged into that mess of petty, b**chy high school drama anymore. I'm so over it and I just want to move on with my life and enjoy it and not drag other women down for the sake of 15 minutes of fame.”
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