Bachelor Australia Season 6 - Nick Cummins - SM Media #2 - *Sleuthing Spoilers*

To keep up to date with The Honey Badger, AKA Nick Cummins, and all the best Bachelor 2018 news, cast and roses, check out our Bachelor hub. It’s a blast.

Everyone take a deep breath. We have something very important to discuss.

So – I was just stalking people’s Instagram stories – like one does on a Saturday afternoon, and noticed something odd.

Cass uploaded an innocuous picture of her with a (cute) dog and a juice of the orange variety (perhaps orange juice – unconfirmed) in hand, in Manly.
Relatively unremarkable. Image via @casswood

Innocent enough.

BUT.

The picture was tagged 'Dolce Terra Manly' which according to my calculations, is a place called 'Dolce Terra' in Manly.

Interesting.

And then I did a tap and saw the unthinkable.

"Oh, there's Nick, inside a restaurant of some sort," I thought to myself.

And then I saw the goddamn tag.

Dolce. Terra. Manly.
Wtf is this? Image via @nickbadger

GUYS NO.

Is this an error? Were only... one of them meant to tag themselves at this "healthy salads & food option for dine in or takeaway & inspired by Italy & the Mediterranean," place?

Or could it possibly be a coincidence?

We know they both live in Manly...

BUT THEN THERE'S ANOTHER THING I WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS.

I did a double take, obviously, and then audibly gasped which caused my dog to look at me with shame and also judgement. But then I kept going.

The next story instalment for Nick is him running... home? The caption reads: "When she says... 'come get your dessert while it's warm.'"
Are you running to Cass, mate?

SHE. Cass is a 'she'. Could 'she' be Cass? COULD CASS BE PROVIDING DESSERT? And is dessert a euphemism for sex?

Unclear.

We also know that only a handful of the bachelorettes follow Nick on Instagram, and Cass is one of them.

I'm not saying anything...

Except that Cass definitely wins The Bachelor and this has made my day.

To keep up to date with The Honey Badger, AKA Nick Cummins, and all the best Bachelor 2018 news, cast and roses, check out our Bachelor hub. It’s a blast.

Deep down I knew this was going to happen.

I learned early this week that I’d be interviewing Romy Poulier and Cat Henesey-Smith, two thirds of the ‘Mean Girls’ trio who have dominated this season of The Bachelor.

Over four weeks, they likely could not have come across worse. I was transported back to Year Eight – a place I was not intent on revisiting – where a trio of outgoing girls almost obsessively tear you apart for reasons that are not entirely clear.

Romy, 29, reduced a woman to tears on Wednesday night’s episode, after accusing her of being a hypocrite for kissing their shared boyfriend. Along with Cat, 24, the pair ridiculed the appearance of several women, mocking one for showing off her midriff when she didn’t even have abs, and laughing that they were relieved when they saw what the intruders looked like.

I could go on. And on. And on.

I know, of course, these women have been edited and produced and what we’re seeing is a manufactured truth. But it is a truth, nonetheless. You cannot edit words into someone’s mouth.

You can listen to the latest episode of Bach Chat, right here. Post continues.

When I told friends I’d be speaking to Cat and Romy, they insisted I ask: “Are you aware of the difference between being honest and being mean? Were you bullies in high school? How did you feel watching the show back? Do you regret someone of the vile insults that came out of your mouths?”

And they’re only the questions I can print.

I had no qualms about asking them tough questions. You signed up for a television show, I thought, and then you said some unequivocally chitty things that you ought to be held accountable for.

And then I met them.

These two women – to put it plainly – are not okay. Romy, in particular, is broken.

Neither were really the women I saw on television. They were far more complex. A little bit funny, a little bit sad, and wearing deep pain on their faces.

On Thursday, for the first time, Channel Ten allowed them to preview the episode early, likely sensing how bad things were about to become.

“I didn’t think it could get any worse than my single date,” Romy said. “And it did. And it wasn’t a nice feeling to see yourself in that light.”

After watching the scene where Tenille left the mansion in tears, Romy said she “felt awful…

“It’s something I’m not proud of. It didn’t feel nice at all.”

She reflected: “One little slither of our personalities have been shown and it’s the ugliest side… it’s a real shame.”

They didn’t re-watch the episode live last night. But when Cat checked her phone after her elimination had aired, she was confronted with more than 500 direct messages on Instagram.

According to Cat, they were “telling me to go kill myself and that I’m a waste of space and I’m fat and I’m ugly. No one wants to hear that.”

They both agreed they said awful things on camera, and Romy repeated more than once, “I’m not trying to make excuses…”

I asked Romy why she chose to leave, given she made it clear during our interview that she really did like Nick.

“It was completely impulsive…” she replied, and then explained why she thinks her gut was telling her so strongly it was time to go.

When she returned home, she spoke to her mum and dad and went to bed.

That night, her father, an otherwise perfectly healthy man, suffered a stroke.

“We had to say bye to him,” she said. “He’d had such a big aneurysm bleed in his brain… and that was the last normal conversation I’ll have with my dad… he’s brain damaged.”

Now, Romy’s tragic family circumstances do not absolve her from the abhorrent things she said. The two things – in a lot of ways – don’t have anything to do with each other.

But what her story highlights is that there is still sympathy to be had for someone who has made some questionable decisions. There is much about Romy and Cat’s lives we did not see in a contrived hour long episode of reality television – and to reduce them to the worst things they’ve ever said is frankly lazy.

There was one thing Romy said to me that I won’t forget: “Is it going to be okay? Do you think it’s going to be okay?”

Because right now, for Romy, it isn’t.

If we want an answer to the question, “How does it feel to have the whole nation hate you?” then we have it.

It feels like poop.

It’s – to quote Romy – “harder than you could ever imagine”.

If our aim is to destroy these women, to bully them for bullying others, then we are hypocrites.

Their behaviour is worthy of conversation. They were absolutely ‘The Mean Girls’. Perhaps that’s who they are in real life too – we don’t know.

But I do not accept that these women deserve death threats.

They do not deserve to be threatened and ridiculed and called ‘ugly’ and ‘fat’ when we’re condemning them for doing just that.

It’s easy to imagine that these women live inside our televisions and once we switch them off, they disappear too. But they don’t. Tonight they will try to sleep, and they will check their phones, and they will call their parents over dinner and check: “Is this going to be okay?”

We must do better.

And if we do – I believe they will do better, too.

A MELBOURNE radio show has issued a scathing rebuke to Cat Henesey-Smith, announcing on air they’d pulled their planned interview with her at the last minute as a result of her “bullying” on The Bachelor.

Cat was sensationally kicked off the show last night after Nick ‘Honey Badger’ Cummins confronted her about her reputation as a troublemaker among the other girls.

NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS: James Weir and Beck Sullivan recap The Bachelor 2018 episode 7

The explosive episode also saw Cat’s sidekicks, Romy Poulier and Alisha Aitken-Radburn, leave the show.

High-profile Bachie contestants traditionally pop up on all the major radio stations the morning after their elimination, but in an incredible twist, FoxFM’s Fifi, Fev & Byron pulled the pin at the last minute.

Addressing the decision on air today, co-host Fifi Box admitted she’d “really struggled” with the decision.

“I watched it last night and I really struggled with this, thinking, ‘But we haven’t really seen any endearing qualities in this person,’” she said.
Romy, Cat and Alisha were accused of being ‘bullies’.

Romy, Cat and Alisha were accused of being ‘bullies’.Source:Channel 10

She continued: “We’re a very welcoming show, we’re not a nasty show, we’re not a mean show, we don’t bring [guests] on here to humiliate them or to grill them … and I thought to myself, ‘I could not, in all good conscience, welcome her to the show’, and if you can’t welcome someone onto your show, why are they coming on?”
The brutal moment Nick dumped Cat.

The brutal moment Nick dumped Cat.Source:Channel 10

Fifi added that she was concerned that if Cat showed up, it would create a negative atmosphere on the show.

“I think if we’d had her [on the show today], we’d have been bullying her, and I don’t think that’s the right message. We all decided we didn’t want to get her in here and give her a hard time because that’s endorsing and reciprocating the behaviour that she subjected other people to [on The Bachelor].”

Her co-host Brendan Fevola agreed, adding that they’d been overwhelmed by the responses online.

“I read some of the messages on [FoxFM’s social channels], and they were like, ‘We’re tuning out, she’s a bully, it’s sending the wrong message, I can’t believe you’re giving her airtime,’” he said.

Fifi also blasted Cat for blaming bad editing for making her look so nasty on the show.

“The problem is, Cat — even if that’s part of your personality, that’s enough,” she said.

“I hope she’s watched the series back. The behaviour was mean and nasty.”

Following their dramatic exit from The Bachelor last night, Cat, Romy and Alisha spoke to news.com.au about their anger at the way they’d been “humiliated” on the show.

“I have so much more to offer with my personality and they’ve just humiliated me,” Cat said, accusing producers of only showing snippets of conversations and remarks made about other contestants.

“I kind of regret having such an opinion,” Romy said. “I feel like at times we were a little manipulated to feel comfortable enough to give our opinion, which is then being taken out of context, twisted, and turned and built into this incredibly b*tchy storyline.”

Speaking to Kyle and Jackie O this morning, Romy admitted the backlash had been difficult to deal with.

“It’s not easy. It’s been a shock. It’s been pretty full-on,” she told the radio hosts, before Cat added: “You’re really seeing just a fraction of our personalities.”

However, in an interview with Nova’s Fitzy and Wippa, Romy seemed happy to wear the “mean girl” tag, although she admitted some of the footage of herself was “hard to watch”.

“I’m not angry; I know what I signed up for. I filled out the paperwork,” she said.

“[Producers] wanted a villain, so I gave them a villain. It’s blown up, but I didn’t attack anyone’s looks, it wasn’t anything derogatory.”

Bachbee wrote:Weird insta story with Britt. She thanks her "besties" Sophie and Cass, also osher and then (unenthusiastically) the "badge"... seems like she genuinely doesn't care for him



Britt also has a local newspaper with a photoshoot that she and Cass have done together in it. It strikes me as odd for F1 to do a photoshoot with another contestant, esp F4?

spangler wrote:I wouldn’t be so sure. F1 is always told to pretend to media/social media that they’re single. If she was bitterly heartbroken I doubt she would’ve even bothered mentioning him.