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Peter Kraus *Finally* Reveals Why Arie Luyendyk Was the Bachelor Instead of Him During Season 22
Spill the tea! Peter Kraus *finally* revealed why he wasn’t the Bachelor following Rachel Lindsay’s season of The Bachelorette. The runner-up from season 13 claimed he was asked three times before taking a “formal” meeting with producers. Of course, Arie Luyendyk Jr. later went on to be the leading man of season 22.
“I told [the producers] I had started to talk to someone and they said, ‘Are you guys in a relationship?’ I said, ‘No,’ and they said, ‘Would you be willing to leave that or exit that?'” the 35-year-old explained on Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti’s “Almost Famous” podcast on April 23. “I wasn’t sure … It was really hard for me, and I couldn’t say I would for sure get in an engagement at the end of the show. It wasn’t that I knew for a fact that I didn’t want to. It was more that I couldn’t promise them that I would and I didn’t want to be forced to do it if I said yes to the show.”
Part of the reason Rachel, 35, ended things with Peter ahead of her finale was because he was not ready to get down on one knee. She later went on to get engaged to Bryan Abasolo. They officially got married in August 2019.
Then, came the matter of money. The Wisconsin native alleged that the producers said it “wouldn’t make sense” to pay him more money since he wasn’t sure he wanted to get engaged and claimed he was “no longer doing it for the right reasons.”
“Well, I make considerably more than that already per year. Why would I give up the rest of my life of being ‘Peter the Bachelor’ and no longer just Peter for the amount of money that isn’t life-changing?’” the silver fox recalled telling the team at ABC.
However, money wasn’t a “major factor” in his decision. Peter had many requests about how his relationships would develop with his final contestants through the season.
“I wanted to be able to spend more time with people individually,” he dished. “I wanted to be able to just go into the house and see people in their natural habitat so that way it didn’t feel like they were putting on a show for me. It was more like this is who you actually are when you’re unsuspecting of where I’m at.” The fitness trainer’s requests certainly would have made for an interesting season.
He also wanted “relationship counseling” for himself and the “top four or five girls” and he wanted “continued support” after filming wrapped. “I saw the pressure that Bryan and Rachel were put under and I thought it was extremely unfair,” he recalled.
Some fans were crushed when Peter didn’t go on to lead his own season, but the former contestant divulged that he almost went on Bachelor Winter Games in 2018. However, just days before he was supposed to begin filming, the producers texted him and said he was off the cast list.
The true reason is still unclear, but Peter hypothesized that it had something to do with competing with Arie’s upcoming season. “My personal opinion was that Arie was the Bachelor at the time and because I was the guy that could’ve been the Bachelor, maybe they just didn’t want the conversation to be had. They just wanted to nip it in the bud,” he said.
Ah, what could have been!
