This rose has some thorns.
Former host of the “Bachelor” franchises Chris Harrison set the record straight after Cheryl Burke appeared on Monday’s episode of “The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever With Chris Harrison” and revealed that a producer for “The Bachelorette” told her that Harrison had blocked her from being cast as the show’s lead.
“I heard you blocked that,” the former “Dancing With the Stars” pro, 39, told Harrison. “Did you not?”
“No. They put that on me,” he replied. “Yeah, like I have that much power, like I have the power to decide who the Bachelor [or] Bachelorette is.”
The Post reached out to ABC for comment.
Burke, who quit drinking in 2018 and has remained sober since, said that the producers of the show told her that she “didn’t get to do ‘The Bachelorette’ because Chris Harrison said that ‘you’re a sloppy drunk.’”
“That’s so funny,” Harrison, 52, chided before revealing that the show’s executives “would never give me that kind of power.”
“They, in public, would never give me that kind of power to decide who the Bachelor [or] Bachelorette is,” Harrison stated. “I mean, Jack Hobbs Mike [Fleiss] would ask me or … somebody would ask like, ‘Hey, like, what do you think about Emily Maynard? What do you think about Jason Mesnick?’ or whatever. And I give my two cents.”
Prior to her marriage in 2019, Burke had expressed an interesting in the rose-giving show.
“My dating record hasn’t been great the past couple of years so if I have a chance to go on I will,” Burke told People in 2012. “I’m getting old, you know, so it’s something of interest to me.”
“It would be fun to have a pool of guys around you and getting to know someone,” Burke continued. “I think if I had people setting me up with different guys, I think it would be easier for me to meet someone to date.”
Burke never made it to the show, nor any of the spinoffs, as she wed Matthew Lawrence in 2019. She filed for divorce three years later.
Harrison also had a falling out with the beloved ABC show in February 2021 after defending Season 25 “Bachelor” winner Rachael Kirkconnell when it was revealed that she had attended an antebellum-themed wedding a year before the show’s taping. He officially left the franchise that June.
On his podcast’s first few episodes, Harrison said that he and his fiancée, Lauren Zima, had been stalked by the paparazzi around that time.
“There were people parked outside of my house for weeks, following me everywhere we went,” the father of two said. “I would sneak down the hill of my house through my neighbor’s backyard and my buddy would pick me up.”
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