Amy Sussman/E! Entertainment/NBCU Photo Bank; JC Olivera/WireImage Cassie Randolph, Colton Underwood
Colton Underwood publicly coming out as gay came as a surprise to his ex-girlfriend Cassie Randolph.
For the first time, the 26-year-old former Bachelor contestant addressed the pair’s split and what transpired thereafter during an appearance on Kaitlyn Bristowe‘s Off the Vine podcast. Randolph said she was not ready to fully speak on everything that occurred between her and Underwood.
“I haven’t talked about it, so it’s really hard for me to talk about it at all or even know the right thing to say when addressing it,” she said. “I just feel so much pressure, I think, when asked about it that I would love to be able to be open and candid about things, but I’m just not there yet. I’m sure I will one day want to speak on it because there’s just a lot there.”
But Randolph eventually revealed how she first discovered the news that Underwood, 29, is gay after he came out in April 2021.
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“I found out the same way that everyone else did. I was actually in Mexico on vacation with friends, which was great — great to be away,” she said. “But yeah, I found out through Snapchat on Good Morning America. It was horrible. It was just a shocking kind of thing.”
Added Randolph, “It’s such a hard thing too when everything is so in your face. I think that’s why I took a step back for so long because I just didn’t want everything to be so in my face. It was a healthy break.”
Randolph was the frontrunner on Underwood’s Bachelor season, which aired in 2019. She eventually left the competition before later choosing to reconcile with the former NFL player.
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“It’s kind of hard to know why I did what I did,” she said of the Bachelor experience. “It’s overwhelming. There’s so much happening. ‘But do I want to? Is this the right decision for me? Is it the right decision for him, for the show?’ It would have been nice to have a week to think about things. … Instead, you’re sitting there on the spot like, ‘What are you going to do?’ “
Randolph and Underwood announced their split in May 2020. She then filed a temporary restraining order against Underwood later that year, accusing him of harassing and stalking her. The motion was dropped nearly two months later.
Now, Randolph is dating musician Brighton Reinhardt and Underwood recently got engaged to boyfriend Jordan C. Brown.
RELATED VIDEO: Cassie Randolph Didn’t Know Ex Colton Underwood Was Gay, Says Source: ‘She’s Still Processing’
Upon reflecting on how her life has changed since being on The Bachelor, Randolph told Bristowe: “I think I’ve really grown into myself.”
“I feel a lot more decisive, I guess, in what I want or my opinions on things,” she said. “[While the show], I think I was just very young. It was so new that now I’ve kind of gotten used to this new kind of life change, and I can more clearly see things for what they are.”
Late last year, Randolph opened up to PEOPLE about how her “really strong” relationship with Reinhardt “feels so much more natural and better” than her previous romances.
“He’s honestly my best friend, which I think is such a key thing to have in a relationship. … I feel like I haven’t really had [that] before,” she said in December. “I feel like we get each other on a different level, especially being friends for so long before. It just made it really natural and easy.”
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
