After Jasmine Absolom broke up with her long-term boyfriend in 2020, the now-24-year-old was ready to find lasting love. She then did what many single people have, at least once, considered – began an application for The Bachelor. The form remained incomplete until 2022, when she was eventually cast for the Channel Ten franchise.
WATCH: The Bachelors 2 Minute Challenge
Despite The Bachelor being just one of many dating shows on our screens (Married At First Sight, anyone?), Jasmine’s heart was set on this one.
“When I spoke to my dad about it, he was like, ‘you are not getting married’,” she tells WHO exclusively, referring to MAFS.
“I think MAFS is more edited and it’s very dramatised, and I didn’t really want to go on there for the drama – even though I caught myself in the drama.”
And she’s not wrong: Jasmine got caught right in the thick of bachie drama.
Namely, Jasmine found herself in a back-and-forth with fellow contestant Tash Candyce after she seemingly exposed her OnlyFans to the group. After that, Tash doubled down against Jasmine, likening her to a “blow fly that wouldn’t leave (her) alone”.
“There’s certain reasons people do things,” Jasmine tells WHO of the feud. “My biggest fear is somebody telling my story for me, or telling their perception of me. But, at the end of the day, that’s her perception. That’s what she thinks, and that’s completely fine. She can have that opinion, but I don’t want to get in the mud with her and play.”
She adds that she’s “so done with the drama, the back and forth, the nastiness”.
“I don’t want to tear other women down to make myself feel better. Sometimes you don’t get a ‘villain edit’, you are [actually] a villain.”
The drama between Tash and Jasmine escalated even off screen, with leaked messages from a Bachelor girls group chat detailing a heated exchange where Tash and Marjorie (Tash’s BFF in the house) likened Jasmine to a “squashed toilet roll”.
Jasmine tells us that, while the group chat still exists, “it’s more peaceful now because those girls were kicked out”. She also explains how the argument began in the first place.
“It genuinely started because somebody was talking about Jed’s sexuality, and they weren’t talking about it in a very nice way. It was a very bad comment. It just was very uncomfortable and some of the girls were laughing about it, I stepped in and just said that it wasn’t okay. It’s just disrespectful. That’s how the b-tchiness got to the point that it did. It wasn’t nice.
“I could have calmed the situation down at some point, but I think I was also so heated at the time that we were having this fight that I wasn’t letting off. But it’s not nice to make fun of someone’s sexuality, and if you’re gonna do that, I’m gonna call it out, and if you’re gonna get upset and throw a tantrum over the fact that you got caught out doing something wrong, then that’s on you.”
WATCH: The Bachelors’ Tash Candyce shares her thoughts on Jasmine swapping bachelors. (Article continues after video)
It wasn’t just Tash and Marj who came for Jasmine, with some viewers suggesting she switched from Jed to Thomas’ team purely for more screen time. Jasmine, however, denies that the decision was motivated by fame.
“I genuinely wanted to go onto the show to open myself up to somebody and to be vulnerable with somebody,” she says. “I’ve always chased the person that isn’t really good for me, or the person that doesn’t really stand up for me or doesn’t have my back. I do it because I like to self-sabotage relationships. I’m scared of getting hurt so I would rather chase the wrong person than be with the right one, ‘cause that’s scarier.
“In the moment that I realised Jed wasn’t going to stand up for me in the (OnlyFans) situation, he was fully believing what was going on in the house and he didn’t really want to hear anything else, I was sort of like, ‘well, I can stay with Jed ‘cause I’m not scared of getting rejected by him, or I can make a decision and leave, or I can make a decision and maybe chase someone that might be better for me’. So that’s what I did.”
Jasmine adds that she “knew Felix was not an option”.
“He’s not going to be someone to open up,” she says of the third bachie. “But Thomas is definitely somebody that you can open up to and be vulnerable with and explore something with. So I went to Thomas.”
Most viewers, indeed, are agreed that Felix is perhaps the… least emotionally intelligent of the three Bachelor boys. Even Jasmine confesses the basketballer is a bit of an ‘f-boy’
“I think he likes the idea of girls, and I think he likes the idea of the ‘pure, innocent, wifey-type-of-material’ girl. But he also loves to be the guy at a dirty club at 3 AM partying with every girl he can get his eyes on. He is genuinely like a nice person, don’t get me wrong. I do like Felix, but he does have major f-boy energy. I don’t think he’s grown out of that stage yet.”
At the end of Monday night’s episode, Felix surprised bachie fans when he didn’t give a rose to Tilly Skok, despite the pair having an overtly strong physical connection throughout the season. Jasmine was equally surprised by the decision.
“We were all like, ‘oh my goodness, how did this happen?’,” she tells WHO. “And (Tilly) was obviously quite upset but, at the same time, he apparently made it quite clear that they just had a physical connection, not really an emotional one, But it’s also kind of on him because he didn’t really try to have an emotional connection with her. He just labelled her as like the ‘sex girl’ and then moved on.”
She continues: “As much as me and Tilly were not the best of friends, I still don’t think it was kind of right the way he went about it. He should have given her the opportunity to, I guess, explore the emotional connection, not just stick his tongue down her throat every five seconds.”
Considering Jasmine left the mansion without a bachelor, we asked which other season of the franchise she would have liked to have been cast on.
“Abbie Chatfield’s,” she says without hesitation, adding it’s the only other one she’s watched. “(Matt Agnew) was so hot. He was great and he loves space.”
Now, we would suggest that Jasmine slide into the astrophysicist’s DMs, but it turns out that no matchmaking is needed, as the 24-year-old has found love since leaving the show.
“I’ve definitely found somebody that is honestly like a Thomas 2.0,” she gushes to WHO. “But it’s something I’m trying to work on quite slowly and moved towards.”
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