Almost a decade after her headline-grabbing run on 2016’s installment of The Bachelor, season four winner Alex Nation has lifted the lid on her time on the show.
Nation — who bested fellow contestant Nikki Gogan to win the heart of Richie Strahan — made multiple revelations about the relationship while appearing on a recent episode of the reality TV podcast, Confessions of a Reality Star.
If you recall, Alex and Richie remained together for some time after the season four finale, but underwent a messy breakup in 2017, just a year after their time on the show.
Two years later, they reunited on season two of Bachelor in Paradise, which leads us to Alex’s first serving of piping hot tea.
Alex was told Richie wouldn’t be on Bachelor in Paradise.
According to Alex, producers kept her in the dark as to Richie’s involvement in Bachelor in Paradise, and even went as far as declaring he hadn’t been cast in the show. As we now all remember, that was definitely not the case.
“I was told he wasn’t [going to be on Bachelor in Paradise],” Alex told podcast hosts Lachlan Guertin and Tahlia Pritchard.
“The cast and crew had chased me for a little while, initially I said no. Then I was chasing reassurance, ‘Will [Richie] be there? Because if he’s there, I do not want to go on that show.’”
“So they had told me that he had declined, and then I agreed once I got confirmation that he declined.”
Alex had an abortion towards the end of her relationship with Richie.
Naturally, the secrecy led to a rather awkward reunion on Bachelor in Paradise, and while little was known about the reason for their split at the time (though many fans guessed), Alex has now revealed for the first time what was really going on behind the scenes.
“I fell pregnant and it was towards the end of our relationship,” Alex said, adding that she and Richie were both surprised by the pregnancy that ultimately ended in an abortion.
“It was not this happy, exciting [time]… it was ‘oh God, I’m pregnant,’” Alex said.
“Whilst he wanted to fight for the relationship, I didn’t feel he was happy either.”
Alex went on to explain the reason for the abortion, saying she “knew we just weren’t each other’s people” and citing the birth of her first child, Elijah.
“I’d had a child before. I was very young, I was 19, I got married, and I separated from that person, and mentally I knew there was no way I could bring another child into the world and come away from it mentally unscathed.”
Richie was apparently “just as shocked as I was” by the pregnancy, Since Alex had “the Mirena [a type of IUD birth control] in for many years, and all of a sudden I’m pregnant.”
Alex was encouraged not to discuss her abortion.
Some time later, Alex said she was urged by Bachelor in Paradise producers to not explicitly talk about her abortion during season two.
“I was encouraged not to openly say what it was,” Alex said.
“I was told, ‘You can allude to it, say as much as you want that you’re comfortable with, but maybe have a bit of ambiguity around it.’”
Alex knew her relationship with Richie “wasn’t going to have longevity”.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Alex dished on the details around her and Richie’s breakup, and confirmed reports at the time that she had dumped him over text.
“I knew pretty soon that it wasn’t going to have longevity,” she said.
“But I had this thing where I’ve just done this huge show, I got to the end and people hated me for it, and now I’m having doubts very soon in.”
*That* infamous chocolate bath was as messy as it seemed.
In lighter fare, Alex later chatted about the infamous scene in The Bachelor where she and Richie enjoyed (or rather, endured) a bathtub full of chocolate.
While she admitted that filming the scene “was really, really fun… because I got to feel him up,” Alex still wouldn’t recommend that particular form of bathing.
“I showered four times that night,” she recalled. “I went to bed, and it was coming out of my ears onto my pillow.”
Beyond her orbit in The Bachelor universe, Alex elsewhere made headlines for her post-Richie engagement to Maegan Luxa, which was sadly called off in 2019.
These days, Alex Nation is happily boo’d up with her current fiancé, Carson Jory.
It’s a happily ever after that might not make for explosive, manufactured reality TV, but it warms our hearts all the same!
Lead image: Instagram/Channel 10
