Chris Harrison Breaks Silence on 'Messy' Bachelor Exit, Says Hollywood Should Be 'Nervous as Hell' About What 'I Know'

Chris Harrison knows where the #BachelorNation bodies are buried, and he appears ready to dish and tell.

In the opening minutes of his debut installment of Harrison’s The Most Dramatic Podcast… Ever, released on Monday, the embattled ex-Bachelor host issued a stark warning to the industry that quasi-cancelled him.

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“I am sure there are a lot of people that are sitting in Hollywood right now that are nervous as hell that I am doing a podcast,” he mused, before cryptically adding, “Maybe you should be, because you probably know that I know.”

Harrison found himself in hot water back in February 2021 when he defended The Bachelor Season 25 contestant Rachael Kirkconnell, who was spotted in photos from a 2018 Antebellum party. In an Extra interview with Rachel Lindsay — The Bachelorette‘s first-ever Black lead — Harrison denounced the “cancel culture” that he felt had targeted Kirkconnell and suggested that her attendance at the party simply looks worse through a 2021 lens, despite Lindsay’s attempts to explain why Kirkconnell’s actions were problematic and reinforced racist stereotypes from the pre-Civil War era.

Harrison later apologized for “wrongly speaking in a manner that perpetuates racism,” and four months later he announced that he was stepping aside from the franchise. He was eventually succeeded by Jesse Palmer.

In Episode 1 of The Most Dramatic Podcast… Ever, Harrison went on to detail the difficult months that followed his tumultuous exit.

“I was heartbroken,” he recalled. “I was gutted. I was embarrassed. I was mad at myself. I was disappointed in myself. The last thing in the world I ever wanted to do was be an agent of anything negative — whether it had to do with race or anything. The fact that I had a big part in this… I was sick to my stomach.

“I lost 20 pounds,” he added. “I didn’t sleep, I didn’t eat.”

Although Harrison says he stands by the point he was trying to get across in that now infamous Extra interview, he acknowledges, “The way I did it was messy and disappointing.”

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