As previously reported, Jen Tran will make history in the near future.
Why?
Because she has been named the next Bachelorette, becoming the first Asian-American in history to land the role.
ABC made the announcement in late March, with Jesse Palmer interviewing Tran weeks after she was eliminated as a contestant on Joey Graziadei’s season of The Bachelor.
We’ve now learned, however, that Tran was not the network’s first choice.
“I was offered the role,” Maria Georgas said on the May 1 episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast.
“I mean, it was mine until I said it wasn’t. And yeah, it became very overwhelming to the point where I had to decline.”
Georgas also appeared opposite Graziadei, advancing all the way to his final four aspiring wives this past winter.
In this revealing new interview, the reality star said the casting decision was so “set in stone” that she had even went ahead with fittings.
However, at some point in March, Tran was confirmed as the lead of season 21 of The Bachelorette.
“She was one of my closest girls in the house, and she was always verbalizing how badly she wanted this,” the executive assistant from Ontario Georgas explained.
“And when everyone around me was so supportive of me being in this position and everyone wanted this for me, I kind of took a second and was like, ‘Why am I not happy? Why am I not excited about this?’
“And it took me realizing that it’s just not my time, where I was like, ‘Guys, respectfully, I need to decline. I need to take a step back.’”
Georgas went on to say that she was familiar with what being The Bachelorette would entail, having watched Graziadei take on pretty much the same gig… and it just wasn’t for her.
“I was not in the right headspace for this,” Maria said on the podcast.
“Because I know the extensive process it was to be on the show, right?
“So having a bunch of guys do the exact same thing and they’re there for me, I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. It was hard for me to jump right back into it, honestly.”
We had previously heard the rumor that Maria Georgas was ABC’s first choice to be The Bachelorette.
But this is the first time she has talked about it in public.
Georgas thinks Tran will be “the most perfect bachelorette,” adding that she needed “time off” from the spotlight and concluding on this topic as follows:
“What people saw on their screens was only the half of what I kind of went through in the house.
“Did I have time off before it aired? Yes. But … I was so anxious throughout the whole thing. And I get it, it would have been my own show, it would have been me having more control over things.
“But again, it’s so isolating being in there. And I would have to give up my phone — not my freedom, but having to be alone in that, I wasn’t comfortable.
“I wasn’t just mentally prepared for it.”