The Bachelor’s Arie Luyendyk Jr. Recounts Chris Harrison’s Warning Before He Split With Becca Kufrin’: ‘This Is Going to Hurt Your Reputation [Exclusive]
Arie Luyendyk Jr. knew that breaking up with Becca Kufrin would blow up The Bachelor Season 22. After giving her the final rose, Luyendyk shocked Bachelor Nation when he told Kufrin he wanted to break off their engagement – one of the most brutal moments in reality TV.
The series was dragged for filming Kufrin’s raw and emotional reaction to being dumped on national television. Luyendyk was vilified.
He knew that he would be hit hard on social media and Bachelor host Chris Harrison warned him how damaging a breakup like this could be to his career.
“Chris Harrison said, like, ‘You’re going to get so much backlash and this is going to be really bad for you and it’s going to be really hard for you to make a career out of promoting products on Instagram.’ Or ‘If you want to go back to racing, this is going to hurt your reputation,'” Luyendyk recounted to Showbiz Cheat Sheet while promoting Advance Auto Parts “Fuel Ride to College” campaign.
Harrison wanted Luyendyk to think long and hard about the repercussions that would reverberate within the Bachelor Nation fandom. “He was like, ‘Do what you wanna do, but I’ve seen how this ended for Jason Mesnick and it wasn’t good for him,'” Luyendyk recalled Harrison saying.
Arie Luyendyk knew the breakup with Becca Kufrin would be tough
Luyendyk knew the backlash would be severe. “And that was the age before social media. So that was tabloid bad press. And he said, ‘But now with social media, there’s going to be like millions of people that are going to be upset. And then also like verbalizing that distaste for your decision.'”
“I was like, OK I get that. But you know what? I don’t really care what Karen says over there in Michigan. You know, it’s really about what’s best for myself. And in your gut, you kind of know what the right call is. And there’s a lot of couples on The Bachelor that I feel like stay together to benefit from being together, which is not the right way to do it.”
He ultimately married Lauren Burnham and the couple has three children. Kufrin is expecting a baby with Thomas Jacobs, so everyone ended up happily ever after.
“It’s easy to look back and go like, oh, yeah, that was the right decision,” he said. “But at the time it felt like the whole weight of the world was on your shoulders. But, you know, now it just seemed like the total right call. And, you know, in my season, it was kind of an alternate ending, I would say. But since then we haven’t had really one season that’s ended in a traditional way.”
The breakup bonded Arie and his wife Lauren
Luyendyk said that despite Harrison’s warning, he wasn’t worried because he truly signed up to find love. “When I came into this, I wasn’t seeking any sort of fame or any sort of career after this. I’m going to go home. I’m going to do real estate, which is what I’ve done for the last few years,” he said. “And I really love her. And I think it’s worth it because this is the rest of my life. This is not just this moment, you know, And I’m glad I’ve made that decision and I feel like it was the right one, obviously.”
“And it really actually kind of bonded, Lauren and I, because we had this sort of like us against the world mentality,” he shared. “So I think in a weird way, it actually strengthened our relationship because we really had to come together to be able to kind of defy the odds and we have to stick up for each other and respect each other in that way. And that sort of kind of continued throughout our relationship is like we put each other first before anything else, and that’s really helped define us.”
