Fans are used to seeing Ali Oetjen dressed in a ballgown looking for love, but after starring on SAS Australia just weeks after a devastating break up, we saw her in a totally new light.
WATCH BELOW: Ali Oetjen reveals what SAS what really like
Former Bachelorette Ali, 34, signed up for the gruelling experience of SAS to prove she’s “more than the reality TV star girl” and despite showing her physical and mental strength, the pressure became too much after she was ordered to dive from a helicopter into a freezing lake.
The show would be challenging enough, but during production Ali was fresh out of a two year relationship with her Bachelorette winner, Taite Radley and admits to Who that she was “seriously at her lowest”.
“I quarantined for two weeks directly before the show because I drove from Ballarat so I was in the hotel room doing yoga and meditation, crying every day and not even really thinking of what was to come because I was in my own world of hurt,” she says.
When asked what she’s most proud of during her SAS experience, Ali simply said she was “just proud of doing it.”
“In the mindset that I was in, I didn’t think that I would last one to two days. I think back and I wish I’d done it now because I feel so strong and ready but that’s all in hindsight,” she admits.
Ali told the Directing Staff (DS) during her interrogation that she still believes Taite is her soulmate but their timelines just didn’t match up.
“It is what it is. We were both pursuing our own dreams and they just weren’t going in the same direction,” she tells us, remarking that she was ready for marriage and children.
“Life takes its course and that’s just the way it was. We didn’t align in what we both wanted. I wanted to chase my dreams and he wanted to chase his dreams and we couldn’t do it together, we decided. But in saying that, we loved each other so much when we broke up.”
The fitness and wellness influencer ended up staying with her parents in Queensland after filming SAS calling them her “ultimate support” during such a tough time.
And though Elly and Becky Miles have taken on the Bachelorette baton and are looking for love this year, Ali has not been watching.
“It’s not because of them. It’s because it’s too fresh – I don’t want to watch it, it’s hard not to think of my experience.”
Ali may not have made it to the end of the SAS course, but admits she’s proud of pushing herself to limits she didn’t know she had.
She also received one of the warmest farewells from the DS, especially chief of staff Ant Middleton, and says that there’s a softer side to the ex-special forces soldiers that we at home didn’t see.
“Going into it I thought the DS would be really heartless, fierce army guys that would just yell at us but as soon as I met them and they started putting us through the drills it was like ‘Woah you’ve got my respect,’” she says.
“You saw that their purpose was to make us a strong team, make us a strong individual and push us to our ultimate potential. We did see that they were doing it all for us.”
She added: “You don’t see the little words of support they give us and they come across as so caring and supportive. I think they’re all family guys but I’ll look at one of them and see their heart and that they’re a family guy but he’s also here with all his experience and getting the most out of us.”
Ali, who is one of the few Aussie stars to appear on The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, may be single for now but don’t expect her to star on anymore dating reality TV shows.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean all reality TV is off the cards.
“Not anything to do with love or relationships. But anything to do with fitness, health and wellness and pushing my limits, hell yeah!”
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