The Bachelorette: Fire And Ice! Chris Harrison Tells All!

By Delaina Dixon | May 24, 2010 | Entertainment

First date lies. Searching for love for all the wrong reasons. And one pretty peeved volcano. Yep, The Bachelorette is back on TV tonight!

This time The Bachelor alum Ali Fedotowsky, who walked out on DWTS alum Jake Pavelka last season because of her job, has returned to find true romance among 25 single (or maybe not!) hotties.

“I went into this saying I wanted someone funny, smart, interesting and quirky, but I learned that regardless of whether I found someone like that, it’s more important how a guy treats me,” Ali tells the TV DivaGal exclusively. “He can make me laugh all day but if he treats me badly, it’s not someone I want to be with.”

That’s a good lesson to be learned. According to host Chris Harrison, Ali gets put through her paces with these would-be suitors.

“She is very vulnerable and her greatest fear is falling in love and being hurt back,” he shares. “This is a very tumultuous season and along the way, those fears are realized by some of the guys she was falling for and it really sent her in a tailspin.”

Yeah, love can totally suck. But it’s got to be a little less painful for Ali, who gets to take her dates all over the world to find out which one is her Mr. Right.

Chris shared even more scoop with the TV DivaGal for this upcoming season, so read on to learn about wrestler Rated-R, why Chris believes the show works because of the people whose intentions are less than genuine, and whether or not Ali has actually found the one!

Why was Ali the best choice for the Bachelorette over Gia or Tenley?

I don’t think Ali is necessarily a better fit. I think the audience and the storyline dictated whom we ended up going with. Ali, because of the way she left, it was kind of unceremonious and stirred things up. We felt for her and she stood out a little bit more than those two.

Did her leaving make it feel like we should give her another shot on the show?

I think she made, in her words, such a bad life choice by leaving and choosing her job over Jake. She got home and realized this isn’t what life is all about. Usually, someone who leaves like that on her own terms, the audience doesn’t love. You would be mad at her for breaking someone’s heart. But I think we all felt like it was such a mistake and we saw her realize that, and I think the audience wanted to give her a second chance.

What kind of man do you think Ali was looking for when she first started the show?

The main thing she realized, and what you’ll realize, what you think you’re looking for is never what you find in the right person on The Bachelor and Bachelorette. It was two days in when Ali said, “Wow, I would never date and be falling for people like this,” and she thanked us for bringing in a wide spectrum of men. I think from junior high on, we all get pigeonholed into believing that we always date blonds or Southern girls or whatever it is. I think Ali realized that she had fallen into that trap and was cutting off a whole section of people she should have been dating.

Did Ali bring in a lot of baggage from her Bachelor experience?

She brought in a lot of baggage from her life, which is typical. Every Bachelor and Bachelorette brings his or her history with him or her, and Ali has been beat up a little bit in love.

The most touching moment for Ali on The Bachelor last season was her sharing her grandmother’s spirit with Jake. Will that play out again this season?

You will see something like that again, but it comes from one of the guys. A guy named Chris L., he gave up everything in life to go back home to take care of his two brothers and dad and his dying mom. Now it’s his turn to get back out there. It’s an amazing story, but it takes him a while to tell everyone. He actually lies about it on the first night. Ali asks if his parents are still together, and he says yes. He didn’t want to talk about his mom who just passed away in the first five minutes of meeting Ali.

Did the Bachelors coming in this season know Ali?

There are no crazy stalkers, but there’s a guy named Frank and during his audition tape, one of our producers said by the way, the Bachelorette is Ali, and he just went nuts. It was crazy how excited he was.

Who are some of the other crazy characters trying to win Ali’s heart?

We meet Justin who reveals that his wrestling moniker is RatedΓÇôR, and he has a Rated-R t-shirt on under his suit. The guys basically start jumping on his pretty quickly. And it all happens in night one.

So we’ll see some fights break out?

You can’t have that many guys and testosterone in a room and there’s not going to be some fights and anger, and that definitely happens with these guys. The girls on the show are usually more backhanded in the way they settle disputes. Guys, we just call each other out.

There are a lot of rumors floating around about certain contestants coming on for the wrong reasons and surprise confrontations. Is The Bachelor franchise at that point where it needs that to make it work?

To a certain extent it’s not really our choice. Casting has done a phenomenal job. You bring 25 people in and whatever happens inside that fishbowl and environment, you just show it. It’s not that we go out and say, “Hey, let’s get Wes, he has a girlfriend back homeΓÇª” You don’t make those decisions as far as stories go, but those stories do come up and you have to follow them. Our producers have done a great job over the last several years of finding those stories, sniffing them out and in the end letting them go where the audience can follow them like a soap opera. I think we probably had great stories in the past and let them go. We didn’t pay enough attention and cultivate them enough. I don’t think it’s necessarily our doing that people come on with a girlfriend or for wrong reasons. That’s just human nature and it’s going to happen.

Wouldn’t the number question be are you involved with someone else right now? Is that question even asked?

Absolutely. The thing is, you can only dig so deep. How are you going to prove someone has a girlfriend if they just broke up? At some point you have to trust these people. You realize you deal with this every day when you’re dating. You meet a guy at bar and he says he’s single, but who knows if he has a girlfriend or is using you for sex or money. You don’t know, and that’s part of the process of falling in love and finding somebody. Our show has always been a microcosm of what’s going on in the real world.

You’ve said this season comes to a phenomenal endΓÇª

It was a such a crazy, tumultuous wild ride for Ali. In the end, she made a really tough decision, and she’s satisfied with it. It is a phenomenal season, and it may have been our best ever.

Should we assume she’s with someone now?

I wouldn’t assume that. You’ll see along the way, it’s a wild ride. I was happy she was still standing at the end.

Ali travels around the world while seeking out her mate. That must have been a lot of fun.

We went to Reykjavik, Iceland, and the volcano is a part of the show. Trying to travel around Europe when this thing was erupting became a bit of a mess. There’s no tag line to this show like On the Wings of Love, but I think it should be The Bachelorette: Fire and Ice.

The Bachelorette‘s new season premieres Monday, May 24 at 9 p.m. on ABC.