After FOUR appearances on Bachelor Nation shows, Ashley Iaconetti is pretty much an expert on the franchise, and she thinks that she has an idea about how the current season of The Bachelor, featuring Peter Weber, will end! When we spoke to Ashley ahead of the show’s Feb. 24, episode, there were three women left: Madison Prewett, Victoria Fuller, and Hannah Ann Sluss. The Feb. 17 episode ended with Madison seemingly preparing to tell Peter that she’s saving herself for marriage, and previews for the upcoming fantasy suites reveal that she will tell Peter that she doesn’t know if she can move forward with him if he was intimate with the other women.
“I think the only one [left] who is strong enough to be longterm with Peter is Madison,” Ashley told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY. “But I have a feeling that Madison leaves! Because you know how, at the end of the series, we’ve been teased [in previews] that Chris Harrison comes up to Peter and says, ‘We just found something out blah blah blah.’? I’m pretty sure he just found out that Madison wanted to go. So I think he’s going to have to win Madison back somehow. I think in the off-season.” Of course, this is nothing but speculation on Ashley’s part, but she added, “It’s a theory that’s not very hard to come up with, if you really watch the teaser in depth.” Ashley also admitted that she thinks it’s “obvious” that Peter “sleeps with Victoria F.” in the fantasy suite, based on what we’ve seen in previews.
Meanwhile, contestants on recent seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette have been criticized for not coming onto the show for the right reasons, and Ashley said that there’s only one solution for that: Casting older contestants again. “When you’re at the age of 24, I don’t think there is this insane desire to really get married next year,” she explained. “I also feel like they’re at the age range that have their eyes on being influencers. [Husband, Jared Haibon, and I] love the opportunities that Instagram gives us — it’s been a bonus that came with the show — but we didn’t sign up with that being an option for us. You need to try to find some women who have their biological clocks ticking, and there will still be a lot of drama with that, because they’re all trying to find a man to settle down with. So there will still be plenty of drama, as far as the producers are concerned.”
When it comes to what the “right reasons” for being on the show actually are, though, Ashley let Jared take the reigns. “If you go for the sole purpose of finding your wife on reality TV, then I’m sorry, I think you’re in the wrong place,” Jared admitted. “You should go for the experience of filming the show and be open to the potential of finding someone you can fall in love with. Let go of all the control and let the chips all where they may, and just try to develop a relationship with this person and don’t be so concerned about things you can’t control. I think the right approach to going on the show is going for the experience and being open to having a relationship. I think the problem becomes that a lot of people are going for the experience after the show and everything that comes with it, rather than the experience of being part of the Bachelor franchise.”
Ashley and Jared, who met on Bachelor in Paradise and fell in love three years later, spoke to HollywoodLife to promote their partnership with the Ronald McDonald House in Los Angeles. Fans of the couple can donate to the Ronald McDonald House to enter for the chance to win a double date with the pair via a Prizeo campaign.