While we as viewers watch, groan, and sometimes even enjoy our way through a season of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, the whole entire process takes more than the two to three months of it we see play out on TV. So what’s it actually like to be a part of The Bachelor machine? What goes on in a full calendar year for the contestants? Well, for example, there are men all over the country right now biting their nails waiting to hear from producers if they’ve made it to the next round of casting for The Bachelorette.

I know this because I met up with Matt Munson (full disclosure: we’ve known each other since high school) in central Connecticut on a snowy Saturday in late December to hear about his experience over the past year, first as a cast member on Rachel’s season of The Bachelorette, and then on Bachelor in Paradise. From the casting process to the filming the show to the lifelong friends he made along the way (and yes, what he thinks about Rachel’s controversial decision and the Corinne and DeMario drama), Munson gets candid about why the reality dating show is actually real — and how it set him up to be a better boyfriend in the long run.

SUMMER 2016

A co-worker’s girlfriend was an “avid follower” of the franchise, and while the co-worker “claims he didn’t pay too much attention to it,” he was determined to submit an application for Munson to be on the show. He did so that summer and as Munson explained, “We laughed, it was funny.”

FALL 2016

Months passed by with no word, but as Munson recalled, “My sister got married in the middle of last October, and a week later I got a call from Melissa, a casting producer in New York. She asked me if I was still interested,” and after he expressed that he was, he explained why. “I wanted to at least embark on the process and see what it took. I figured even that was worth it for an experience. Even if I go just one more step, or a couple more rounds into this, at least I’ll have learned something about myself and how this all works.” Now, I know what you’re thinking — what an alarmingly normal thought process for someone who spent half their year on reality TV.

Here’s where the casting process kicks into gear: “The first thing was the video,” Munson remembered. With the help of a friend from high school, he put together an introductory video, with a final edited version ready just a few days later. “I thought it was pretty good. I sent that in, they liked it, and they wanted to see me in New York. So I had to go to New York right before the holidays. I sat in a room with three or four casting people, and the lead casting producer. They were all very nice, asked me a little bit about myself. I was nervous, but it turned into more of a discussion than anything else. It was taking a few pictures, a few hot seat questions, like, ‘What’s been your experience with relationships?’, ‘What do you hope for yourself for the future?’, ‘What do you look for?’ You know, all that basic stuff. I had an inclination that it would be racial, only because I do remember them asking, ‘What are your feelings dating, interracially?’ It doesn’t make a difference to me, and I said, ‘I haven’t dated much outside my race, but I figured that at this point, my parents would just be happy no matter who it was!'”

Munson knew he was on to the next round when, “They sent me home with an envelope that was like 30 pages full of more questions. Now it was like, okay, we’re really going to turn it up a notch. Now we’re really considering you. So fill out these 30 pages, take more pictures, a lot more pictures, send them in.” But even at this point, he notes that it wasn’t urgent. “As long as you kept in touch with them, let them know where you were at with the whole process, they were patient enough. Then you’d give it to them, and it was like hurry up and wait. You’d wait to hear from them and just tried to forget about it, but in the back of your mind you knew that this was still on the table, the possibility was there to make it, or to fall on your face. I was at peace either way.” You already know which way it went.

JANUARY 2017

Then came the summoning. “They called me, and they were like, ‘We want to fly you out to LA for casting weekend,’ Munson said. “The casting weekend is crazy. They run you through the ringer, they definitely want to vet you. Up until this point, you’re only dealing with the casting people, and then that’s sort of the transition, that weekend, into them handing you over. Like they find you, they take care of you a little bit, you’re their baby, so to speak, and then they hand you over to producers. It’s really like, now it’s the producer’s call. Now we’ll find out whether they like you or not.”

After the whirlwind weekend, “You leave there not knowing what’s going to happen next. Once again, we’re all, ‘When do you think we’ll hear?’ ‘What was the general consensus?’ ‘Should I have a good feeling about things?’ But they can’t really tell you much.”

Munson even admitted, “I remember not thinking it was going to work out, just based off some of my interactions with the producers. I think they learned a bit about me, but I didn’t have all the right answers.” He described having “an uneasy feeling on the plane, and then as those next few weeks went by, I did get a little nervous.”

Back home in Connecticut, he was busy watching the current season of The Bachelor play out on TV and sussing out his options of potential Bachelorettes among the female cast members on the show. “I did really like Rachel’s poise and her maturity level. I thought that as a lead, the show would be in good hands with her. And I knew that I could at least forge a friendship with this person, whether or not it turned into something more.”

FEBRUARY 2017

“When I heard it was [Rachel], I thought it was going to be good, I thought it was going to be worth it,” he said. She was announced as The Bachelorette on Valentine’s Day and, “The next day that they called me and said, ‘Are you still interested?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ They said, ‘Okay, everything looks good, we’ll give you a call tomorrow most likely, but it’s looking good.’ So I felt confident, but still sort of on edge. But sure enough, the next day they called and they said, ‘Okay, everything is going to be set up for you to come out here middle of March. We’re going to move forward with everything. You’ll start hearing from producers soon.’ I had a great producer that was my point of contact from that initial call until I got to the house, really. She was great.”

Munson also received instructions on what to bring along for the journey. “There’s a whole packing list. You have to prepare as though you’re going to be away for two months, and you don’t know where you’re going to end up. Could be hot, could be cold.”

MARCH 2017

Munson flies out to LA to begin filming The Bachelorette, just as The Bachelor is wrapping up its season on air. For him this includes taking time off from your job, saying goodbye to your family and friends, and also keeping the news a secret for a while. “It’s sort of on a need to know basis,” Munson explained. “You can’t go around putting it on social media that you’re leaving, you won’t be around for a while. I work with my family, so they were supportive. They knew what was going on, they were excited about it. My closest friends knew. My parents were pumped up about it, my brother and my sister, they were all looking forward to how it would go for me. I didn’t know. You could be there for 5 days or you could be there for 9 weeks.”

As soon as the contestants arrive, the producers take away your phone, computers, and other devices. “The first couple weeks it’s weird. The first week to ten days is really weird, but then it’s kind of refreshing. You get used to it, and you just learn to live without it. Obviously guys have gone back, and I did another show, you know what’s going to happen. Some guys are still frustrated, they didn’t want to have that, to be cut off. I think it’s nice to fall off the grid for a little while. Disconnect and detox from society, so to speak, from the real world.”

In fact, Munson even credits the lack of technology for why the show works. “I appreciate the process. People ask how you can fall for someone that quickly, and I do think it’s because you rid yourself of any and all distractions. I always thought it was like old-school dating. You’re focused on that person in the moment. You’re not focused on anyone else, anything else, work, family, friends. You’re just there.”

Munson admitted that the other guys on the show are really the only distraction at all, even though he believes he mostly got along with all of the other guys. “Coming in there initially, you have a lot of big, bold personalities, a lot of alpha males, everybody trying to stake out their territory. I just said I was going to be myself no matter what. That’s usually pretty mild-mannered, pretty low-key, and if it worked out for me, great, and if it didn’t, oh well. I was going to live or die by being myself. So it is overwhelming when you first get there. A lot going on, and a lot of noise.”

Also: a lot of cameras. “Yeah, you get filmed every day,” he said. “There are cameras every day. Some days less than others, but usually there’s some footage every day being taken. You have to tough it out when you’re in that house, because you’re with all the other people, and I can only imagine the girls. The guys are hard too though, because there’s so much excitement, a lot of egos, a lot of loud voices, and if you’re one of the quiet guys, it’s a lot, it’s overwhelming. But you find your little niches and guys that you’re comfortable with. I clicked with Eric early on.”

And that doesn’t mean you’re under a total microscope at all times, either. “There’s always a means of clearing your head if you want by going outside, go by the pool, they have a path that you can run or walk up and down if you want to take a little walk around the mansion just to separate yourself, mediate a little bit, whatever. Eric was big on meditation. The first ten days we were in the house, it’s a struggle. You miss home. I haven’t spent that much time completely cut off from my family ever. But it was good for me. I didn’t want to reach out to anybody, I wanted to really get the full process and have it better me because that was the idea, anyway.” He also pointed out that he was “one of the older guys” of the group that ended up on the show, along with Kenny, Bryan, and Peter; “It was a few guys who had tried and failed before [at love].”

APRIL 2017

Credit where credit is due: the guys waited until they were far enough in the process to leave the house to really start any whispering about who might be crowned the next Bachelor. “That’s not really something that’s brought up too early. I can remember that we debated a little bit when we were traveling. But not until we were outside the country. You’re so involved in the process that you don’t think about it. And if they are, they’re keeping it to themselves. I think most guys are just focused on what’s going on in the moment. When we got closer and closer to the end, I think it became something people wondered.”

As the guys traveled around the globe, Munson started to take stock of the items left in his suitcase he hadn’t worn yet .“I don’t know if I used everything I brought. We didn’t go to a lot of warm places, so I don’t think I brought my pea coat out until the end when I got dumped. And that was really the warmest place we’d been. But in Switzerland, where we were, I went from pretty warm in our hotel to, depending on where we went elevation-wise, pretty cold. I remember that last day we were in France, it was so windy, it was cold. I remember the Viking day, being on that and being so cold, so cold.”

One thing that had been worn thin was his emotions. “You get to a point in this whole thing where you do get a little fried and you start to reach a breaking point, and that I think was when I was like, ‘Okay, whatever happens from here moving forward is a bonus.’ You just, you peak out.” Munson continued filming the show until the middle to end of April when Rachel sent him back home.

MAY 2017

Back in Connecticut, Munson was readjusting to regular life, returning to work, and reflecting on his time with the show. “I think about the transition back. You try your best to contain your excitement and your nerves and just do your regular thing. That was the suggestion that was given to us: to just go back to your normal life, do your regular thing, get back into your habits and into your groove. Because when it comes, it’s going to come fast, and it’s going to be a lot. So you’ve got to be prepared for it. The best thing you can do is ground yourself. And that’s true. Just anchor yourself with your family and your job and everything else to get yourself ready for what’s going to come.”

One thing he notes as helpful in the process was leaning on the shoulders of his new friends. “As it drew closer, it was a simple thing Kenny said. He was like, ‘We have this secret that we kept amongst ourselves, and now the whole country is going to see it.'”

The first step in that process: the cast names and bios are released. “There’s a lot of nerves because there’s no training for it,” Munson reflected. “It’s reality TV, so you’re just regular people, and then all of a sudden — you have no idea. They prep you a little bit for ‘This is what it’s going to be like when your name comes out, when the show starts to air,’ but there’s no real prep for it. You have to just experience it and it hits you like a ton of bricks, and then you have to respond however you’re going to respond.”

The Bachelorette premieres on TV. The world is introduced to Munson as…a penguin. “A lot of people don’t know that’s her animal,” he explained of Rachel’s favorite animal. When asked if he was encouraged to dress up or have a gimmick, Munson said, “No one forces you to do anything. I thought that my way in was going to be via humor, obviously make a statement. But the scary thing is that you’re so nervous. You might as well break the tension, but I didn’t know they were going to cut it that way and make it that silly. I looked so nervous that you can tell I’m nervous. I really thought from early on that if I was going to be nervous, she was really going to be nervous. She was getting used to it as she went through more and more of us. I figured I’d just make her laugh. It was a silly thing.”

He went on to say, “It was out of my comfort zone, but the whole thing was. There’s such build up to everybody, you become forgettable pretty easily. So I thought, why not leave a big impression and put a big smile on her face and at the risk of what? Being silly and sort of making a fool out of yourself, but really in the name of trying to laugh.”

That means Munson now has a framed photo of all the contestants on the first night in their dapper suits and him dressed as a penguin. But really, he’s cool with it. “I go through my head and I think if I had to go back, would I do something different? I don’t know. Did I think I’d dress up in a costume? No, but when you’re scrambling and you’re like, ‘Oh man, this is crazy, what am I going to do?’ The penguin is a symbol of love. I probably could’ve done something smoother or cooler, but in the end, it was a way of saying ‘I don’t take myself too seriously,’ even though that was a stretch for me. It was a way to say, ‘I’m not here to think I’m too cool for this thing, I want to have a good time,’ and figuring that she would appreciate that if she was indeed the person I thought she was.”

Sooo…what was it like to be on TV!? “Your first thing is, oh man, this is a lot. But then you give yourself a week or two and you sort of balance out. It takes some time, it really does. It was intense. And again, there’s no prep for it. So when it comes out, it’s just like you’re not trained how to respond to it. Being on the internet and stuff like that.” Yes, he was reading your comments. “It’s hard to ignore that stuff,” Munson confessed.

As far as his portrayal on the show he admits to being mostly “lucky,” although, “It was a little rocky there for a while, because you have no control over the editing process. So if you’re not in it, people will have their questions about why you’re even there and whatever.”

If anything, he earned a reputation for being a chill guy as he was certainly no camera hog. While he largely avoided any drama amongst the dudes, Rachel also avoided one-on-one dates with him, spurring a #WhoIsMatt hashtag on Twitter and coming with other complaints from people. “When I wasn’t on the show much, there was a lot of, ‘We watched this show for you and you’re not on there.’ And I’m like, ‘I didn’t do it for your entertainment.’ That was awkward, but if you’re not happy with the way things are cut, don’t watch it. Don’t do me any favors,” he said, revealing that it did make him want to take a step back from the attention.

But where he found the most support was from the other guys on the show. “We lean on each other, that’s what we do, every episode. There’s two phases to this, too. There’s the experience yourself, and then there’s watching the playback. So it’s twofold. We go through it together, and we play it back together.”

JUNE 2017

As the show continued, Munson would watch with friends and family. “It was an exciting time. It was the summer time, there’s a lot of buildup every week. As a group of guys, we were wondering what we were going to see next. Because no one sees it. There may be an exception to that rule here or there, but we don’t see it.”

But any rumors of producers being heartless and acting as evil geniuses in the editing room don’t hold much validity after all. “We get a call from producers if it’s going to be something that’s going to affect us or if it was a bad episode, if someone got in an argument with someone else,” Munson stated.

And just as he’s adjusting to life, working during the day, watching himself on TV at night, the opportunity for Bachelor in Paradise comes up. “It was not a long breath in between. The biggest thing for me was getting used to everything that was going on and wanting to have a little bit of control over it, and then them saying, ‘We want you to go to Paradise.’ So you’re like, I’m not sure if I like this or not, but they’re like, “We’d like you to come to another one.” And then I’m confused because I’m like, ‘I’m not sure why. I’m not on it much.’ But they were like, ‘In the end, you’re going to see.’ You put a lot of trust in producers. I said I’ll do it again, I’ll put my trust in them, and I’ll have a great time. I mean, no matter what happened in Mexico, it’s a great time.”

Until…it’s not. As news broke of the drama between Corinne and DeMario, Munson confirmed the cast was really in the dark. “It’s like anything else when you’re nervous, the bar is open, that whole day is a big party, everyone realizes that. But we didn’t really even know. We knew it was a crazy day, but we had no idea that a few days later — what was coming.

As a media circus ensued, Munson said, “Those few days later, we kind of knew that things were a little unsettled leading up to the first rose ceremony. Something felt off. But when we ever got into the Rose Room and they said, ‘Here’s what happened,’ everyone was dumbfounded. We had no idea. There was no rumor going around that this happened or that happened. We knew that they were probably hooking up a little bit and that, you know, Corinne was a mess and DeMario was wild as could be, but we had no idea any of that was coming out. No one thought it was that bad. And I still don’t think it was that bad. This is going to sound bad, but I don’t think what they said took place, took place. I think it was two people that just got a little too carried away in a hot tub.”

JULY 2017

“I remember getting a call,” Munson said about his exit airing on the show. “I didn’t know that the goodbye for me was going to be that emotional, so I got a call to say, ‘It’s going to be tough to watch, maybe.’ You’d get that if it was something, just to give you a heads up. ‘This is what to expect,’ so it doesn’t smack you in the face.”

And he watched the episode, but also admitted, “I’ll be honest, there’s still a few episodes that I didn’t watch,” including “the few before that.”

As the show came to a close, he spent some time reflecting on his role within the season. “Obviously I didn’t make too much of a spectacle. I made the bold entrance, but I didn’t do anything to offend anybody. The usual response [back home] has been pretty good. ‘You didn’t do anything to piss anybody off. You represented us pretty well.’ So I’m content with the way it went down. Did I get a lot of airtime? No, but that wasn’t my purpose. I had the experience, that was the key.”

Munson rolled into the Men Tell All special feeling pretty good about it all. “The Men Tell All was great. Any time you get to reconnect with those guys is terrific. It was like we never left. We got to iron some things out. Any unfinished business we got to get it off our chest. The best part was that we all got to hang out after the fact. That was great, and it was a celebratory thing, too, because we pretty much had almost made it through the whole thing.”

While a relationship with Rachel didn’t work out for any of the men except Bryan, their friendships with each other are still going strong. “Nobody came away after watching themselves and was like, ‘Man, I wish I never met this dude,’ or whatever. If anything, it brought us closer after the fact. I think our bonds with one another are stronger now than they ever were. But the Men Tell All was great for that. You wish you could have one of those once a year. A reunion would be great.”

AUGUST 2017

Paradise premieres, only a week later than expected after the brief shut down during production, and Munson watched at home with friends and family. “In the previews you see me in the hot tub and I knew that in my mind it didn’t get much further than that, so pretty much what you saw was what you got early on.”

Of the experience, Munson reflected, “I had fun, yeah. I got closer with a lot of guys that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I got closer with Dean, I got closer with Iggy, Jack Stone, those guys. Ben Zorn is a friend of mine. So I’m thankful for that. Even though it didn’t really, you know, work out ideally for me.”

Oh right, about that. As Munson hung out with Jasmine, things only intensified at the resort for her — causing him to head home, but not before presenting her with a rose so she could stay and make trouble. And that pesky #WhoIsMatt hashtag was of no use on Twitter anymore — he was ON this show. “It was the first time that it was really like, ‘I’m on a show now.’ I was definitely on a show. No arguing that.”

And while some personalities were stronger, more dramatic, and louder than others, he noted, “I never met a single bad person. I met some different people, some characters, but for the most part, everybody was a decent person.” Which is what contributed to his reluctance to enter into anything serious with Jasmine. “I was still recovering from the whirlwind experience that The Bachelorette was for me, so I wasn’t quite prepared to dive in and meet somebody so quickly anyway. I was going there really with the mind frame that I was going there to get a vacation. Out of everything, and that was really expressed to us, too, is that this might be the perfect opportunity to get away from all the hoopla surrounding the show, and just decompress a bit.”

Munson employed a similar outlook for embarking on the adventure that is Paradise, and even more relaxed, than he had for The Bachelorette. “I was very much about the idea, just going to Mexico, hanging with my buddies, if I met someone, great. I said, I’ll try something new, and just, again, get the full process. Do The Bachelorette, go to Paradise, finish it off — I’m out of my comfort zone already, so let me stay out there. But I really didn’t expect to meet anybody.”

So when he went on a date with Christen, much to the surprise of Jasmine, it landed him directly in the drama — much to the surprise of himself. “I really thought that to just go on a date and not rule anything out would be cool. So when I went on my date, I was just like, ‘Why not?’ That was my attitude. Happy go lucky, and you know, I bit off a little more than I could chew. But for me it was a date, it was let’s have a good time.”

SEPTEMBER 2017

Less of a good time was the Bachelor in Paradise reunion, which aired in early September. “I do feel like I sort of walked into a buzz saw, because I didn’t know I was going to be one on one with [Jasmine]. I thought it was a little bit strange because, you know, walking in there you get the evil eye from a lot of the women, the directors, crew. And I was like, ‘You guys are turning up the drama here because you know she’s on her level and I’m on mine.’ I never had any ill intentions. I think in the playback you can see that. I think they revved her up.”

Munson kept his cool demeanor throughout filming the special. “I have sympathy any time someone feels like they got the wrong end of it, but I was just like, if you need to vent, I’ll sit here and take a beating.”

What we didn’t see on camera was that this event on the show shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise to anyone. “The funny thing is, I said I was going to go home. I kept saying from the beginning, ‘I might go home tomorrow, I might tell them and then tomorrow I’ll be out of here.’ Because I just wasn’t quite ready to go to Mexico. If they were like, ‘Let’s go in August so you have a couple months to cool off from the other thing,’ then I think I would’ve been ready for it. But I was sort of like one foot in Paradise and one foot out. So I kept saying, ‘I could go any day now.’ But the money and the more TV time had never been my bird, so like, I’ll hang out for a while but we’ll see how I feel when I wake up in the morning. So [Jasmine] always knew. But it seemed like it was so shocking that I would’ve left her. Everybody knew that I was probably going to leave at some point. I stuck it out as long as I could, and then I was like, enough is enough. Let me get back to the normal world.”

FALL 2017

So how exactly is the normal world treating Munson these days? “It’s just too normal sometimes,” he said. “I think that for some of the guys that live out in LA, it’s probably not as big of a gap between the two. When you come from a much more normal place, which I would consider [Connecticut], where I’m from, it’s very lopsided. It’s two opposite extremes.”

He’s still interested in TV opportunities, but you’re expecting to see Munson return to the Bachelor world, specifically for the upcoming Bachelor Winter Games that will air in February, well, he’s got some bad news for you: “Not for me. You won’t see me.” But that’s only because he’s got some great news for himself: “I’ve met somebody really great. Like, really great.”

They’ve been dating since the fall, and “in the past month or so became really serious. You settle into that groove.” And the even more unexpected news is that he’s landed in that groove because of his time in The Bachelor machine.

“I made it a point to go on the show to fix my inability to be prompt, because you don’t want to be the one holding up the production. So I’ve gotten a little bit better at being on time. You have to realize that it’s a whole group and that it’s not about you.”

He points to the basketball date, when it was revealed that DeMario had a girlfriend right before he came on the show, as a time where, “We came together as a group of guys knowing that [Rachel] deserved to be cheered up a bit after all that, and we tried to do that together. You get a better perspective that it’s not all about you. It’s a big world out there and you just realize that it’s bigger than you. So it makes you a little more selfless.”

Another lesson he’s taken away from the experience is that, “When it comes to relationships, [everyone] has to do what’s right for them.” Perhaps the finale of The Bachelorette inspired this lesson just a little bit? “I really do firmly believe that Rachel picked the guy that she really wanted, regardless of what other people think. I think she picked who she wanted. And I think that towards the end of that, you can’t control people and what they want and everybody is going to do what’s right for them. That’s the way that all relationships should be played out. What you might look at from a distance might not be right, but really to that person it’s right. They’re doing what’s right for them.”

After her emotional “breakup” with Peter, the fan favorite, Munson can only laugh. “Yeah, I’m not worried about Peter. Not for a minute. I don’t care how hard he cried,” he joked, knowing his castmate will be just fine in the love department.

One more takeaway for Munson is that, “You’re very much in a moment, so I guess it’s carpe diem. Seize the day. Don’t let something you see that could be great pass you by. Put everything out there. We learned in a major way, your shit’s out there for the world to see, but if you can do it on that stage, then you have no excuse when you go back home and you’re with somebody to not leave it all out on the table.”

Munson continued to get insightful about the whole year and offered, “Before maybe I didn’t fully know who I was or didn’t really fully realize what I wanted, but this show teaches you. I remember one of the producers when I left saying that there’s a reason why a lot of guys, when they’ve left and gone through this process, that it’s not long after that they end up with somebody. And he was right. It’s worked out well for me. Ben’s doing the same thing. He’s seeing someone and he’s pretty open about it on Instagram. The guys that really have pure intentions, they’ve struggled in the past with dating, and this show teaches you to just put it all out on the line. If someone means something to you and you don’t want to have regrets like a lot of us have had in the past, well now you know better, so it’s on you from now on. You have no excuse.”

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