Clayton Echard‘s journey to find love on The Bachelor was filled with surprises, but perhaps none was bigger than when he and Susie Evans confessed they were giving their romance another chance following their dramatic parting of ways in Iceland.
After Evans left Echard devastated when she decided to exit the ABC show upon learning he had been intimate with fellow contestants Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia, he tried to make things work with the two remaining women. However, the former football player soon broke up with them both and asked Evans to give things another go, but she turned him down.
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That’s why it was hard to believe when Evans took a seat next to Echard during Tuesday’s After the Final Rose live reunion special, as the pair revealed they had gotten back in touch after returning home and had since been dating. They aren’t engaged, but Echard is moving in with Evans in Virginia, and they are taking things day by day. Meanwhile, Windey and Recchia will get second chances to find love on national TV as The Bachelorette‘s first co-leads, with the season set to premiere this summer.
“I never got used to the cameras being in the room,” Evans tells The Hollywood Reporter during a sit-down with Echard following the finale. “It made me uncomfortable, not for any reason other than I just couldn’t get out of my head when I was in that situation. Coming off the show, it’s been a lot easier for me to have a relationship with Clayton that’s just super healthy and super transparent.”
During the interview, the couple opened up about where things currently stand in their relationship, how they’ve approached the topic of intimacy, their biggest regrets and the texts Evans recently exchanged with Windey and Recchia.
You’ve said you won’t be planning to get engaged for the time being and are planning to do a pulse check on the relationship in three months. What makes you feel you’re a strong enough couple to weather all of this?
Clayton Echard: We’ve weathered the worst of it, I believe, because everything that we went through, it’s just so much. And I could go on for days and days of how hard it was to watch it back, how hard it was to actually experience it. But here we are on the other side of it, and not to say that life won’t be tough outside of the environment that we were in, but we were in the public eye, and every decision that we made was under constant surveillance from the public. And I think now we’ll be able to kind of fade off a little bit and just be together and not have to do a long-distance relationship. We’ll be under the same roof. And I think that will really give us the best chance of figuring out whether or not this will be something long-lasting.
You’re not the first person to sleep with multiple people during the fantasy suites. Did you feel that you received too much criticism, or that perhaps the show should reconsider how it handles the overnight dates? Is three people too many to invite to the fantasy suites?
Echard: I won’t really comment on what the show does because, honestly, I don’t think I’m in a place to comment on that. Listen, that show’s been around for, what — 20-plus years? So I think they have a good idea of what they are looking for when creating the show. Beyond that, the whole thing has been challenging for me just to watch back, and I realized the decisions that I had made at the time, I was doing everything to the best of my ability to navigate it. But as we’ve all seen, I didn’t always, I guess, make the right decisions.
Do each of you have a biggest regret after watching it back?
Susie Evans: There’s a lot of things I could have done differently, but I would have probably found a way to be more up-front about my expectations going into the fantasy-suite week and just utilize whatever time I had at any previous point to just make those expectations more clear. That would have saved myself, Clayton and all of the other women involved a lot of heartache.
Echard: And I think for me, I wish I just asked more questions. I think that would have saved a lot of the things that I ran into. I was very big into communicating, but I just should have asked more questions. That would have saved, I think, a lot of heartbreak.
Clayton, were there any exchanges that you had with Gabby and Rachel during the After the Final Rose that viewers didn’t see, or was there a vibe we might not have known about?
Echard: I didn’t have any interaction with them until [that] night. Once the cameras cut, they were quickly whisked away. The vibe I got was there’s differences between the two of them. I think they’re both just ready to move on and not much more that needs to be said, is the way I perceived it.
Will you watch their season?
Echard: We’re excited to absolutely watch their season — both their seasons — together. It’ll be really exciting to see how this is going to work with the two of them. It’s an interesting format. We obviously know the both of them. We’re very happy for the two of them, and we’re excited to see what comes of it.
Courtesy of Craig Sjodin/ABC
Susie, has your relationship with Gabby and Rachel been tough, or have you had any exchanges with them recently?
Evans: It’s complicated. But what I can say is that Gabby, Rachel and I were very close at the end of the show, and we’ve remained supportive and loving of each other. And when episodes aired, we’d send quick texts to each other. “Wow, you look incredible.” “Oh, my gosh, you’re just wonderful” — or whatever it may be. We all supported each through the show — post-show as well. Gabby’s one of my best friends from the show. She’s supportive of me as just one of the greatest friends I could have ever asked for. So, nothing has changed. It’s just a tough situation, you know?
Has it been challenging to transition to a relationship without cameras?
Evans: It’s been a lot easier for me, post-show. I realized pretty early on that I just wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal to date publicly — it’s private, but it’s also publicly — and I never got used to the cameras being in the room. I never got used to people being in the room while having a conversation, and to be quite frank, I didn’t like it. It made me uncomfortable, not for any reason other than I just couldn’t get out of my head when I was in that situation. So coming off the show, it’s been a lot easier for me to have a relationship with Clayton that’s just super healthy and super transparent. And it’s been a lot easier post-show for me, personally. And it’s just Clayton and I, so that also helps.
Echard: Yeah, it’s definitely been a lot easier. I echo that sentiment 100 percent.
How did you handle the conversation of deciding when your relationship would become intimate?
Echard: With as much honesty as we’ve had the entire way, it was just one more conversation that we could easily have. That’s what I love about this relationship is that there’s no conversation that we can’t talk about. When you are in the public eye and everything was really out there for everyone to see, to me it’s like, what can’t we talk about? That’s what we found is, every conversation we have, there’s nothing that we can’t talk about and understand each other’s sides. With the topic of intimacy, there was just one more conversation, like any other conversations — if we were asking, “What do you want to eat for lunch today?” It’s just that simple between us to have those conversations.
Evans: I agree completely. And I also think it’s important to note that our morals and ethics on sex and relationships are very similar. I would say we actually see it the same way. It gets complicated when you go on a dating show, and you’re dating 30 people. That’s where that becomes very complicated because it’s uncharted territory for both of us. But when it comes to our real lives — our real feelings about sex and relationships — yeah, we’re on the same page, and that conversation, it was never taboo for us anyways. It showed us that we are totally aligned on that in the real world as well. We have the same expectations for each other.
Have you gotten any surprising support from public figures or members of Bachelor Nation?
Evans: We’ve had a lot of people support us from Bachelor Nation — and people who just watched the show — and I’m so grateful. People that have been in our shoes recognize the challenges that this imposes — not only on an individual, but also a relationship. And so I think there are people intentionally rooting for us and also just recognizing that there’s so much more of the picture that nobody will ever know. We have peace with our individual experiences in reality, and that peace has brought up together.
Clayton, you’ve been on The Bachelorette with Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe as co-hosts. Now, Jesse Palmer, who debuted as the host of your season, will handle Rachel and Gabby’s season, which may have surprised some viewers. What makes him the right fit for the role?
Echard: I am so biased towards that man. He is an incredible human being. I think he has done a phenomenal job of just stepping into this role and doing it for a first time. He’s a professional, and he’s been on broadcasting — he’s been in the sports realm — but he knows how to do this job. This guy is no average-Joe first-timer. He lived in the Bachelor world — he was the Bachelor at one point — so he knows how this thing works. I was so thoroughly impressed by how well he handled himself throughout the entire way. This guy was there every step of the way. He was just fully involved 100 percent, and this guy has a kind heart, and he really wants what’s best for everybody. And he will be there as a guiding light for these women as they embark on this journey.
After all you’ve been through, would your brothers consider doing the show, and has anyone from production reached out to them?
Echard: I don’t believe anyone’s reached out to the two of them. I’ve actually asked my middle brother, Nate, if he would do it, and he said, “I don’t know.” So that’s not a no — it’s not a yes. Who knows? Honestly, I can’t speak for the two of them. I think they are intrigued by it, just after seeing how much fun I’ve had and all the life lessons I’ve learned. I got two maybes out of them.
Sometimes, viewers get to see footage of the meet-ups that happen after the finale, as we did when Arie [Luyendyk Jr.] and Becca [Kufrin] split up at home. We know that Susie sent Clayton a DM as soon as she landed in the States to set up a time to chat, but was there talk about ABC filming your time together as you rekindled things after Iceland, or did you try to keep it a secret?
Echard: We wanted to keep this as secretive as possible because it’s a big part of the show, right? Not to spoil it — to have people be excited about what is to come and tune in and not just obviously know the outcome. We were as quiet as we could be. We confided in just a couple of our closest friends and family, but beyond that, we were doing everything in our power, the two of us, to keep this thing under wraps.
What advice would you give to Gabby and Rachel, or to the next Bachelor, to help avoid some of the pratfalls you experienced?
Echard: I would just say over-communicate — follow your heart and over-communicate. Those two things, I think, will put you in a good position.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
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