You're friends with Jessica Brody outside the show. What did you make of the love triangle story line between you two and Ciarran?
We’re like best friends. When I saw her we literally ran to each other and I almost had a cry because I was so happy she was there. We’re very very close and when I came back from my date with Ciarran I was like, ‘We didn’t vibe, didn’t like it’ and then she was like 'Do you mind if I...' and I was like ‘Yeah babe go for it, I could not care less.’
We had a conversation before we went in because we were like ‘Obviously we know we might go for the same guy because there’s like eight people there.’ So I was like ‘If we both like the same person then we’ll just see who they choose and there won’t be any hard feelings either way’ and she was like ‘Yeah cool’ and that’s how we were. We’re so close we wouldn’t want a guy to get between us so we pre-discussed it. I didn’t like Ciarran either after our date!
You still get your fair share of online trolling but it seems this time round you've been getting so many positive reactions and messages. How did that make you feel?
It was really good and so great to see. It made me feel like all of the effort that I put in in the last year to make people critically analyse why they think certain things about reality TV shows has worked because sometimes you feel like yelling into the void. I’m excited to see on Locky’s season if there’s a different reaction to someone who is a similar character to me and I hope that it will change for other women down the line.
Do you know anyone appearing on Locky's season of The Bachelor?
No but I got so many DM’s from girls when they were going into their interviews being like ‘Do you have any advice? What should I do?’ and I was like ‘I don’t know, I literally applied and the next day I got on, you’ve just got to talk.’ I’m really keen to watch it - I’m going to do recaps on the podcast of it and I’m so excited to have a different bunch of people to be focused on. Usually it would be airing now so we’ve had more than our fair share of being the latest Bachelor girls. I want to get away from being the Gemini girl!
If you were offered the chance to be the Bachelorette, would you do it?
I would do The Bachelorette because I think it works really well and there are some really good success stories from it. I think it would be fun but I think I need a year or two off. I’m only 25 - I think the right age for it would be late twenties like Angie Kent, even though she and Carlin broke up which is really sad.
You and Cass had your issues on Paradise and The Bachelor last year. You've said that you don't want to talk negatively about her but do you think Australia is seeing the real Cass on the show?
We saw her say things to Jess when she arrived like ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight’ and then saying that she’s a tatted up stripper b**** or something which is a really horrendous thing to say. Cass does have quite conservative views I guess on things like that and I think that her views with that are aligned with how I know her views are I guess is what I’ll say. Obviously everything’s amplified and everything’s with a grain of salt but you see her face to camera say ‘She’s a stripper with tattoos’. She has no problem with Ciarran being that but Jess is apparently a bad person for that.
People seem to be noticing the double standards between men and women on reality TV more so this year.
Even Ciarran knows it and it’s no shade on him – he shouldn’t be getting in trouble and the girls shouldn’t be getting in trouble. Its ridiculous - the patriarchy strikes again, honestly!
Speaking of Ciarran, what really happened when you two were in bed together?
Oh my god nothing, we didn’t even kiss! He had his hand on my hip because we were trying to get comfortable to go to sleep and he was kind of moving it up and down and patting me but we didn’t kiss. Everyone keeps asking me and I didn’t think it would air because it was so nothing.
You weren't there for long but did you see any sparks flying between other couples in Paradise?
Timm and Britt were really cute. They’re both really lovely and they’re different but they somehow went well together when I saw them. I'm hoping they survived Paradise and they’re still together because I thought they were really sweet and really genuine with each other.
