‘Bachelor’ Host Jesse Palmer Talks Kelsey A.’s Note: ‘We Need to Talk’ Is Normally ‘Not Great’

Host Jesse Palmer understands why Joey Graziadei had a meltdown over Kelsey Anderson’s ominous “we need to talk” note.

“‘We need to talk’ can mean a lot of things. Normally, it’s not great. Nobody, including Joey or myself, had any idea where this was going,” Palmer, 45, teased to Entertainment Weekly on Tuesday, March 12.

At the end of the Monday, March 11, episode of the The Bachelor, viewers watched as Kelsey, 25, spiraled while Joey, 28, had his fantasy suite date with Daisy Kent. (She started to worry that she wasn’t The One after a conversation with Golden Bachelor runner-up Leslie Fhima.)

“There’s, like, a conversation that needs to be had before going into the rose ceremony. It is more pressing now than later,” Kelsey told the camera. “I don’t want to blindside Joey, ever. I just want to be honest and I want to be able to tell him everything that’s on my mind. I would rather leave now than have my heart completely broken.”

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Kelsey decided to ask Joey for a conversation via a letter, with security camera footage showing her sticking the note in his hotel room door. After returning from his date with Daisy, Joey received the message — and began a downfall of his own.

“I don’t understand what this is. I’m confused. I didn’t expect to see a note on my door. … Usually when someone writes, ‘We need to talk,’ it’s scary and you think it could be, ‘Something went wrong,’” Joey said. “And I don’t understand what could’ve went wrong because I haven’t said anything to her. This would derail everything. … This is, like, my worst nightmare coming true. I’m over giving everything I can and feeling like they aren’t choosing me.”

The episode left on a cliffhanger, with unanswered questions about why Kelsey wanted to chat, and which of his remaining three contestants — Kelsey, Daisy and Rachel Nance — would be in the final two.

During Kelsey and Joey’s fantasy suite date, she dropped the L-word to him, to which he replied, “I’m falling in love with you, fully.” Joey noted that he had been feeling that way toward Kelsey “for a very long time,” and he exclusively gave more details about the timeline to Us Weekly.

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“It’s a great question. With Kelsey … you go back to the last time she really started expressing things, almost back to Montreal. We were going a lot of off feelings, but there wasn’t really words being exchanged, so I did hold it in for a while,” Joey said. “We both agree [that] when she was falling in Montreal, I was falling too. … I never said it to her because I wanted to be intentional with my words.”

Joey and his contestants traveled to Montreal during week 6 of the season, one week after Kelsey received her first one-on-one date in Marbella, Spain.

“But it was really after our second one-on-one in Jasper, how just great that day was, how much we were starting to continue to see things move forward and not take any steps back. That was when I kind of truly knew that I was falling in love with her,” Joey said. “But as always, it’s a feeling — it takes time for you to feel comfortable to share those words and there needs to be the right space and you need to think everything through.”

The Bachelor airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.