After a tumultuous first few days on the beach, Jill Chin is back on the market heading into Week 3 of “Bachelor in Paradise.”
Speaking with TheWrap ahead of Monday night’s episode, Chin said she felt “super hopeful” entering the new week with the women giving out the roses. At the rose ceremony last week, Chin accepted a rose from Romeo Alexander, who she’d had her eye on when the two descended on the beach. But she quickly shut that door after Alexander began exploring his connection with other women.
Alexander made it clear when he gave her the rose that it was meant as an apology and that she should use it to explore other connections on the beach, should she be sure that they couldn’t rekindle their flame.
“Going into the first Rose Ceremony, I was fully expecting to go home. I wasn’t expecting a rose from Romeo. He could have chosen somebody else that would have maybe pursued a romantic connection with him. It didn’t seem like anybody was going to though, so I think that’s why he wanted to give me the rose, just to kind of smooth things over,” Chin said. “I did end up accepting his rose because I mean, he even said it himself during his little speech to me, that I could use the rose to explore other connections and that’s what I did. I had conversations with Romeo afterwards, but it was very much the tone of like, ‘You need to explore other connections because this one is done.’”
This is Chin’s first season on “Bachelor in Paradise,” and the experience presented new challenges than her time as a contestant on “The Bachelor” did. While vying for Clayton Echard’s heart, she was one of more than 30 women who were involved in that love story. Now, the spotlight is on her.
“I guess I wasn’t used to the focus being on my love story. So that was really, really different and everyone’s on their own journeys. There’s so much going on in paradise. It is a really hard environment, and it’s extremely high emotion,” she said. “So I just think trying to navigate all of those relationships at once versus just the one relationship with the Bachelor is extremely difficult, and there’s a lot of other feelings you have to worry about.”
With the women handing out roses this week, the men will be fighting to stay in paradise longer, which means Chin has an opportunity to exhale after the stressful situation with Alexander.
“I was expecting the guys to be a little more aggressive and you can kind of see like the boys being really nice to us and bringing us breakfast,” she said of the upcoming week. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is so nice.’”
While we’ll have to wait and see how everything turns out, Chin assured TheWrap that she has “no regrets” about how “Bachelor in Paradise” ultimately went for her.
“Of course, when I’m watching back I’m like, ‘Oh my god, that was so cringy. I shouldn’t have done that.’ Or like, ‘I look a little crazy,’” she said. “But I know in the moment that my emotions were valid, and I think people just have to understand you’re seeing very small snippets of really high emotion, super intense situations. I learned so much from the process and the outcome is what it is. I think I’m happy with it.”
