Rachel Lindsay: I Always Knew Nick Viall Wasnt Going to Pick Me

A gut instinct. Bachelor Nation’s Rachel Lindsay knew from early on that she was not going to make it to the end of Nick Viall’s season of The Bachelor.

“Men are painfully obvious as to who [they] like from the beginning,” Lindsay, 33, said on the Tuesday, February 5, episode of the former Bachelor’s “Viall Files” podcast. “We always knew who you were gonna pick. We knew it. I would tell producers. I would say, ’I don’t even know why I’m here because I know what he’s gonna do.’”

The attorney, who Viall, 38, sent home on week nine of The Bachelor season 21, told her ex that while she didn’t feel like he “led [her] on,” she was fully prepared to be eliminated.

“‘It’s been real fun. This is it for me tonight,’” she recalled telling the crew before the rose ceremony during which she was sent packing. “I remember. I was like, ‘It’s not me.’”

Lindsay also recalled a moment when she was sitting with fellow contestant Astrid Loch and saw an “arts and crafts” book that Vanessa Grimaldi, 31, was planning to show Viall on a one-on-one date. She noted: “Astrid and I were flipping through it and I go, ‘This bitch is gonna win.’ That was the second week.”

Bachelor Nation Rachel Lindsay Always Knew Nick Viall Was Going to Pick Vanessa Grimaldi
Rachel Lindsay, Nick Viall and Vanessa Grimaldi. Getty Images (3)

While the Dancing With the Stars alum did end up proposing to Grimaldi in the end, he said he “had a real connection” with both Lindsay and Raven Gates, who was the runner-up.

“I really liked a lot of things about you guys and there was [sic] a lot of attributes that both of you had,” Viall told the Texas-based lawyer on the podcast. “[I thought], ‘I would really like this in my relationship.’”

Us Weekly confirmed that Viall and Grimaldi called off their engagement in August 2017, five months after the proposal aired on television. “We gave this relationship our all and we are saddened that we did not get the fairy-tale ending we hoped for,” they said in a joint statement at the time.

Lindsay, meanwhile, went on to become the season 13 Bachelorette and got engaged to Bryan Abasolo on the show’s finale, which aired in August 2016. The duo are now planning a summer 2019 “destination” wedding and told Us exclusively that she currently has one thing at the forefront of her mind — her outfit!

“I gotta get the wedding dress!” Lindsay told Us last month. “I wanna work with Randi Rahm, who did my dresses on the show. I have to get to New York to get a fitting. And that’s, like, immediate. I want my mom there, I want Bryan’s mom there — that’s the most immediate thing.”



Sign up now for the Us Weekly newsletter to get breaking celebrity news, hot pics and more delivered straight to your inbox!



Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone?
Download the



Us Weekly iPhone app now!