It’s safe to say that Chris Harrison is not on Rachel Lindsay’s Christmas card list this year.
Earlier this week, the former Bachelorette lead was asked by her podcast co-host, Van Lathan, if she has any plans to appear on Harrison’s brand new podcast, titled The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever … With Chris Harrison.
Lindsay gave a simple and pointed answer to the question, stating on air:
“I was not asked and I would not be on it.”
As part of the teaser for his upcoming program, Harrison said this month that he plans to address his Bachelor firing in detail.
“I’m a little nervous. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts..
“It’s really heavy,” Harrison said in the trailer. “We’ll see how it goes.”
Back in June 2021, Harrison confirmed he was done with the franchise after he was taken off the show due to the way he handled a race-based controversy involving former contestant Rachel Kirkconnell, who had shared social media photos of herself at a plantation-themed party in college.
Speaking to Lindsay on Extra shortly after this controversial went viral, Harrison called for “grace” and “understanding” for Kirkconnell, and told Lindsay that things were different in 2018, which is when the photos of Kirkconnell were reportedly taken.
Harrison went on to say that “the woke police is out there,” and that Kirkconnell had been “thrown to the lions,” although he later apologized for his remarks.
It wasn’t enough to save his job, however.
Last summer, he and ABC executives agreed to a buyout and Harrison has not appeared on the network since.
“It’s been almost two years since that happened and the last time you had any communication with me was after I said, ‘We should just accept his apology after he was on Good Morning America and move on,’” Lindsay explained of why she won’t appear on Harrison’s podcast.
She added that Harrison texted her after the March 2021 GMA appearance when the initial reaction to his apology was that he wasn’t sincere.
“People turned on Chris again or went harder on him. And he wrote me and said, you know, ‘I appreciate what you had to say. We should go have dinner.’
“So that was over a month after the initial thing and so you never reached out to me in between when I was going through all that [the hate I was getting] on social media.
“But you, you know, you’re in the media telling everybody I’m your friend.”
Indeed, Lindsay previously said she received death threats for the way she interviewed Harrison on Extra and for all the ways she has been critical of him ever since.
“I had to hire people to protect me. I couldn’t even pretend to want to be involved [with the franchise] anymore,” Lindsay wrote in June for New York Magazine.
This wasn’t the first time she came down hard on The Bachelor and all the racism she believes has been associated with the program.
As for where she stands with Harrison?
“You’ve unfollowed me on social media at this point … moved on, [started a] new chapter,” she said on her podcast, addressing the ex-host personallyy.
“When you move on from that new chapter, I was not a part of it.
“I would imagine he signed some sort of NDA, so I think this will just be him for the first time saying how he felt with it, all the aftermath, losing that job [and] how it affected him…
“I think he’ll refer to it as ‘the interview’ [and] ‘when that happened.’ I don’t think he wants to touch that [or say my name] because then it’s going to elicit a response from me and then, you know, it goes back and forth.”
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