Spilling the tea…
Bachelor Nation fans got to know Nancy Hulkower on Season 1 of “The Golden Bachelor,” and she’s been keeping fans updated with her life on social media ever since.
Recently, we saw Nancy surprise Joan Vassos in the Islands of Tahiti on “The Golden Bachelorette” to chat with her about Fantasy Suites and share some advice.
Now, she’s stopping by the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast to spill some behind-the-scenes tea on her conversation with Joan and the crazy journey to get there.
Podcast co-host Joe Amabile asked Nancy what she was planning on talking about with Joan and what advice she felt like sharing with her.
“I heard that she was struggling. One of the producers called me and said, ‘She just needs a girlfriend, we’d love for you to come,’” Nancy shared.
“I wanted her to follow her heart. But also, she has felt, and you’ve seen it on the show I’m sure, she brings up John… It hasn’t been that long. It’s only been 3.5 years, and so… I think she just really needed a girlfriend to say, ‘You know what? It’s okay.’ And I did. I said, ‘You need to do this for you,’ and I think it made her feel good that she saw a familiar face like me, and I think it helped,” she recalled.
Joe also asked Nancy if Joan told her anything in particular about the remaining men that made her think Joan was swaying toward one person over the other.
“So at that time, I got there right before Fantasy Suites. They had not happened yet, but they were going to happen,” Nancy answered. “She was surprised that Pascal sort of [wasn’t] ready. And I think that threw her a little bit.”
Nancy then expanded on why Joan was so thrown by Pascal not being ready yet.
She said, “I think because she thought, ‘I’m the Golden Bachelorette, these guys want me’... and then they’re not ready. And I think she really, and she has said that really surprised her and humbled her because then she said, ‘I may not leave with anybody. What if they don’t want me? What if all three of these guys go, you know I’m not really ready yet, what am I gonna do?’ So that was scary.”
Podcast co-host Serena Pitt asked Nancy if she could share more about her journey getting to Tahiti, which she heard involved the Bachelor Nation star having to wear a disguise.
“Okay, this was my favorite thing in the world. A producer said, ‘We’d like for you to come and it’s gonna be Sunday.’ Now again, this is Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. I thought he meant next Sunday. So I said, ‘Okay!’ and he said, ‘And you need to bring a dress, sort of tropical, but not too summery,’” Nancy replied.
She continued, “And then he said, ‘And we have one last request… You need to be in disguise’... So my daughter who’s in college was home and then I’m like, okay, I have a day and a half… I’m like, ‘Okay, Maggie, I need you to go to CVS’ and I’m thinking, like, how can I be incognito?"
"I said, ‘Go buy me one of those long ponytails,’ you know, so I can put on a long blonde ponytail that comes all the way past my waist. So she does," Nancy tells, "I’ve got this long ponytail. I wore a black psycho bunny hat with a hot pink bunny on it, I wore a black face mask, I wore black leggings, and then I wore this oversized… surfer sweatshirt that had writing on the sleeves… And the producers, we all had a text chain… They’re like, ‘[Joan] cannot see you.’ Like, this truly had to be a surprise… and everybody’s on the same flight to Tahiti.”
Nancy then revealed more about traveling to Tahiti and how she almost got caught by Joan.
She said, “I’m in line, and I look over, and there’s Joan probably 12 feet away from me. And I literally thought, ‘She is not gonna know that I am here,’ so I turn around and I let everyone go ahead of me… And can I tell you, it was the biggest rush because I was like, I’m gonna deliver. They told me to be incognito, I’m gonna do a really good job…But it was so fun and it was really, really good to see her. Like, you could tell that she was shocked when she finally had her eyes on me, and I think it really helped. I think she just needed to spit it out to a girlfriend. She had plenty of great people around her, but I think she just needed a girlfriend.”
Listen to the full interview in the “Bachelor Happy Hour” episode below!
