Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Photos by ABC

There are many things we could criticize (and we have) when it comes to this season of The Bachelor. But two of the best things to recommend about Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s season are Bekah Martinez and Kendall Long, who constantly provided viewers with a no-nonsense voice of reason as they angled for the affection of this 30-something real estate agent, before being sent home late in the game. Earlier this week, Vulture invited the ladies out to brunch to discuss the biggest questions on the minds of Bachelor Nation. What follows is a lightly edited version of that conversation, which Luyendyk Jr. probably shouldn’t read.

Bekah, I know you auditioned for the show because you thought Peter would be the next Bachelor. Was that the same for you, Kendall?

Kendall Long: I originally thought it was going to be Peter, yes. I think everyone thought that.

Bekah Martinez: There was no way in hell anybody thought it was going to be Arie.

KL: I didn’t know who Arie was. My sister was the one who got me into auditioning for the show. I was tipsy one night, watching the Bachelorette when I visited her. I didn’t actively watch the show Rachel’s season, but the dodgeball date came on and Peter looked really cute. My sister was like, I think he’s going to be the next Bachelor, you should apply. So I did and kept saying yes. It was a fun idea. I figured, why not?

BM: I watched Rachel’s season. My mom doesn’t watch the show, but I remember calling her and I was like, Mom, I swear, I would actually date this guy in real life! He’s so cute and cool! And I love the way he handled things with Rachel! A lot of people critiqued Peter, but I thought he was so real and honest when a lot of people aren’t on the show. He was just like, I haven’t had enough time with you, I don’t think I can commit. Which I totally applaud and respect.

KL: He’s very well spoken, which is what stood out to me. I liked that it was Arie, because in a lot of ways it allowed the girls to be closer because we didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t know a lot about him. It didn’t feel as catty this season. It was like a woman tribe. We were talking to producers, Is it normally like that? And they said, not really. It’s a special cast. You saw that at the end of the After the Final Rose ceremony when we ran up and sat with Becca. That tribe showed.

I imagine Krystal wasn’t part of this “woman tribe.” Was it justified to give her the villain edit this season, or was there a kindness to her viewers never really saw?

KL: They couldn’t share everything that she did say. She said more awful stuff that never aired. In normal life, she wouldn’t be like that. But this situation made her be like that. I think it was a fair edit. We were all mad at her for a reason. Everybody felt the same way about it. I roomed with her for a bit. She’s not all bad, and she wants to be good. The pressure of the situation, she didn’t handle it as well.

BM: The thing was that she went around appearing good when she wasn’t. Which is a little wacky. Combined with a bunch of stress, it’s not good.

KL: She had fasted for two days before the bowling date. We were traveling to Florida from Lake Tahoe and she hadn’t eaten for two days. At the bowling date, it was the first time she’d eaten in a long time. She was chowing down on the wings and the beer. Drinking without eating for two days, she was super tipsy. There were a lot of factors there.

BM: The main problem was she didn’t just own what she was: a little crazy. She was always quoting Tony Robbins.

KL: She loves Tony Robbins.

BM: Tony Robbins is her god. So she was always preaching peace and love, and I was just like, Ugh, stop trying so hard. At the end of the day, you said what you said and did what you did. Although, things can be cut. I was annoyed at the Women Tell All. Tia and I had a heated back-and-forth and I had come out with the final word and had gotten the applause, and when they aired it on ABC, she said the final thing and I was sitting there silently and the audience was clapping. They made it look like she won the argument.

L-R: Caroline, Becca, Kendall, Bekah M., Seinne, and Tia at the After the Final Rose special Photo: Paul Hebert/ABC

Were there any other moments the producers cut from the show that you two thought were important enough to air?

KL: They film 24 hours a day, so I imagine it’s hard to edit it down. There are some things I think, Oh, I wish they showed this because it’s so cute. Like, for the hometown date, Arie had given me this gift. He made a box with 50 notes that was “50 moments we shared together.” It was really cute, but they don’t show stuff like that.

BM: That’s a great example. Kendall’s relationship looked weaker in comparison to the other two girls. That wasn’t necessarily the case.

KL: My relationship with him was very strong. I’m surprised they didn’t share a lot of our silly, fun moments. I understand, I guess, in terms of the story it made sense to strengthen other relationships and show more of them, because they did last longer. As an editor you have to ask, Who will actually last longer? You have to nurture the other relationships with edits.

BM: Even though they didn’t show much of Becca and Lauren’s personalities.

I was surprised Lauren didn’t get much airtime until a few episodes in, and even so, she got a really terrible edit as the eventual winner.

KL: Lauren is really guarded, but there is so much more than the edit showed.

BM: This is really important: Lauren was extremely goofy and extremely fun. When we were still at the mansion, we were roommates, and she was literally wearing a fake butt twerking upside down on the side of the wall and belting out Moulin Rouge! lyrics on the balcony with me. But as she developed more feelings for Arie, she became more closed off and guarded and insecure. I don’t mean “insecure” in a negative way, but you are competing with multiple other women. Of course, if you care about someone, you’re going to get insecure about yourself in the face of so many other relationships. I wish they gave her more dimensions on camera, but the thing is, she didn’t show her dimension on camera. I don’t think they had much to work with.

KL: Some of the girls were surprised to not be on the show much. Like our friend Jacqueline, she’s an amazing woman with so much depth, and she was questioning why she wasn’t being shown early in the season. It’s because some people don’t open up on camera. They can’t show what you don’t show.

BM: Or you can open up, but if you don’t say things that are provocative or …

KL: Relative to the story line…

BM: It’s not like I was saying things on purpose to get more screen time, but I am a naturally provocative person who says things that are deemed “controversial.” So if you have me saying something like, I hope Becca doesn’t get a rose, I hope she doesn’t come home, I want there to be more roses! That’s going to get screen time. But if you have someone like, I really care about Becca and I really want her to get a rose and come home, nobody wants to watch that on TV. Some women may have really opened up, but when you have the gasp-worthy sound bites, they’re choosing that.

Do you think the producers could’ve given Lauren a less bland edit if they really tried?

KL: It depends. I was surprised that her relationship with Arie was so strong. I hadn’t seen that while filming, and she never talked about her relationship with him. So I thought my relationship with Arie was stronger than hers, but when I saw their date in Tuscany I was like, Oh no, I can 100 percent see their strong connection.

BM: You can see the way he looks at her. He’s enamored with her, absolutely enamored. I can’t say I’m not surprised, because what she presented in front of the camera was two-dimensional, even though she’s very much a multi-dimensional person. I thought it was interesting to see her cry every time she talked about him.

KL: She showed a lot of emotion on camera that I didn’t expect. But she was really guarded. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person that would want to have her love life on television. She was definitely there for love. She wasn’t there to sell hair gummies on Instagram. [Laughs.]

BM: I’m not sure how she got on the show. She doesn’t seem to enjoy being on television at all. She doesn’t seem to particularly like being in front of camera or like the structure of it, either. She was so uncomfortable with him being in a relationship with other people. So I’m like, How did she get here?

Is the audition process to get on the show stressful? You’d think that would dissuade her from ultimately doing it.

KL: I didn’t do a casting call. I put my picture in with some info about myself. I said I collected taxidermy. Dead animals are great! So some producers called me up and I did an interview with a couple of girls. It was a big group of girls and there were puppies in the office. Later on, I went in again and I had to fill out a packet and take some photos. And then they had a final casting full of producers at a hotel. It was pretty chill.

BM: I had a really different experience. I went to a casting call 45 minutes outside of L.A. I’m a pretty cunning person and I’d watched the show for awhile, so I thought, I got to plant my quirks. I got to be the token indie alternative girl. I’ve got the short hair, so that works, and I’ll wear an outfit that’s different and talk about how I’m a rock-climbing nanny and how I love to snowboard and do art.

KL: Because they want to create characters. You need to exaggerate your traits.

BM: Exactly. So I played that up. There were probably 300 or 400 girls at the open casting, and you all go in groups of 40 or so women to a hallway, and there are casting agents in many rooms. You talk to them one-on-one. Most girls were in and out in three or four minutes. It’s a casual talk. I knew right away that I was doing well, because I was there for about 30 minutes. I talked about how much I like Peter and this and that. They had the final casting in L.A. in a hotel, but I didn’t actually do any of that. I didn’t hear back from them for weeks, and they expedited my casting process about 10 days before filming. I actually asked the producers about that later: Why did that happen? I didn’t go through the normal casting process like everyone else did? What she said was interesting. They only announced Arie the week before filming. We didn’t find out until everyone else did on Good Morning America. What she said was that they weren’t going to cast me for Peter’s season, and when they switched to Arie, they threw me in the casting.

KL: It could’ve been the age thing or part of the narrative.

BM: Maybe. It’s interesting that they wouldn’t have put me on Peter’s season.

KL: You’re one of the more popular people from this year. I really don’t know.

BM: I think they wanted me to be the villain at the beginning.

Oh wow, what made you think that?

KL: She’s outspoken!

BM: It’s true. There’s actually a producer who’s known as the “villain producer.” He works with those “villains.” I started out working with him. If there’s one thing I can reiterate, it’s that this show is not scripted. It’s real. When you think about it, when you send 20 women around the world, stuck together, of course drama is going to happen. If you travel with your best friend, drama is going to happen.

KL: They cast people who have different personalities. They want people who probably would be more confrontational. It’s the reality of this show.

BM: And bring in the fact you’re all dating the same guy. Moments will happen naturally! But I will say, there were some little things that would happen in the beginning where they would try to get me in a negative light. I was talking shit about some girl in my interview one day, and that night at the cocktail party when I was talking to Arie, she was the one who came and interrupted me in the middle of us having a great conversation. I walked away annoyed, and immediately the producers were like, Wow, can you believe she interrupted you? That was so rude. When you asked for more time, she didn’t even walk away, she just stood there watching you guys. I looked at this producer and was like, Stop, get out of my face, I’m not engaging in this. And they played dumb.

KL: That’s the thing, it’s a choice. It’s a choice whether you want to engage in that or not. You can say no to things. It’s what you as a person wants to do. If anything, these producers offer you the opportunity for confrontations, but they don’t force you in any way to do anything.

BM: Exactly. There were a couple of situations like that where I was like, You’re trying to get me to react right now and blow up and freak out on this person when that’s not really justified. Another example of that is Bibiana. She kept getting shut out and people were messing up the little cabana she set up or interrupting her at the beginning of her conversations with Arie. I remember there’s a moment when she’s fuming and I’m like, Bibi, if you stop reacting, these bad things will stop happening to you. If you feed into it and scream at girls, I guarantee you’re going to keep getting interrupted and your time will keep getting cut short. You’re never going to get to use your cabana! She was like, I can’t!

KL: She still came off as a very strong woman. We all love her.

BM: With Bibiana, it worked out, but for Krystal, not so much. It can go in different directions. The less you react, the less things are going to happen to you. I remember being in the mansion having a conversation with somebody and the producer was like, Why don’t you go talk to Arie? And I didn’t really want to at that moment. But when they keep cajoling you, it makes you wonder what’s going on. It’s like, maybe Krystal didn’t want to interrupt Bibiana, but if a producer comes to her and says it’s her time to see Arie, it’s different. It’s the power of suggestion.

KL: Most of the time, you make your own decisions. Except for when you get to eat. [Laughs.]

BM: When people say Arie was manipulated and produced and they made him break-up with Becca, that’s bullshit. No one’s holding a gun to your head, saying you have to do anything.

They weren’t going to cast me for Peter’s season, and when they switched to Arie, they threw me in the casting.

Let’s talk about Arie’s break-up with Becca. Why do you think he wanted to do it with cameras all around?

KL: I liked how raw it was. It was good to see the reaction. Becca handled it extremely gracefully, and I loved seeing the strength she had. He didn’t handle it in the best of ways. If it was me trying to break-up with somebody, I wouldn’t have done it on television. But I liked that it created a platform to get Becca as the next Bachelorette. It wouldn’t have made sense for Becca to be the Bachelorette if it wasn’t aired and we didn’t see her struggles.

Arie even said in an interview earlier this week that he broke up with Becca on-camera so she could be the next leading lady.

BK: I don’t think he did it on purpose. He really said that?

Yes.

KL: It doesn’t seem like that would be the case.

BK: This is just his personality type. He doesn’t analyze future situations deeply enough to have that thought when he was going into breaking up with her. I highly doubt he was like, Oh, if I do this on camera America will sympathize with her and she’ll be the next Bachelorette!

KL: He does things without thinking. He just takes action. I think his feelings for Lauren are extremely real and he wanted to make that happen. His decision to break up with Becca to go with Lauren, it happens. People make mistakes and that’s totally understandable. It’s how he handled it that made people mad. We all love Lauren and Becca equally. Arie should’ve handled it privately, but at the same time, I liked that it wasn’t private. Becca now has such an amazing opportunity to find love. I genuinely believe she will find love on this show.

BM: She’s going to get married with whoever she finds on that season. Have babies and be happy. I don’t mind the break-up being aired at all, but the intentions behind it were weird. He was talking with Becca like nothing was wrong in the week leading up to it. She was blindsided. That’s the other thing, he showed up to their happy couples retreat with no luggage, and she was like, What the fuck?

KL: And she had just gotten her ring resized. Bad timing.

BM: That’s the thing, he had been talking to Lauren for weeks leading up to that.

KL: He slid into those DMs.

BM: To the people saying, Well, he had to do it publicly because he’s on this show. No, that’s not true. He contacted Lauren very privately over her Instagram DMs. If he wanted to, he could’ve broken up with Becca very privately. There are choices. I would cover my own ass if I wanted to break up with someone on TV.

KL: They didn’t edit it, so there wasn’t a chance of skewing either way. Which is also a reason I liked it not being edited. You couldn’t make someone look better above the other. If only he just left after she asked him to.

BM: She begged him ten times to go! That was the tipping point for me.

KL: Because you were defending him initially, Bekah.

BM: I love Becca and was sad that happened to her, but I was actually siding more with Arie until I saw that. I really was. At the Women Tell All taping it was nice to talk to him and I thought, You know, he changed his mind. Matters of the heart happen, not a huge deal. But then I saw the footage. The choices he made were inexcusable. I know those types of men who stand there after a break-up and are like, Wait baby, but are you okay? Give me assurance this is fine! Make me feel better about myself! That happened to me, over the phone in a Target parking lot a few years ago. That’s what Arie was doing. It was a game to him. Will you just talk to me? Are you okay? He asked her so many times if she wanted him to leave, and he kept hanging out. This is a big point of contention for me with him: When he reached out to Lauren on New Year’s, obviously at that point he was interested in getting back with her. There’s no other reason to reach out to someone. He’d been thinking about her and told Becca he couldn’t stop thinking about her. When he had doubts enough to contact Lauren and talk about a potential relationship, before that occured he should’ve broken up with Becca. If you want to be with somebody else and you’re willing to reach out and ask them to be with you, you have to break up with your partner first. He did not. He talked to Lauren for weeks and made sure she was on board with getting back with him. It wasn’t until then he felt comfortable to break up with Becca, which is so wildly inappropriate to me. Imagine if you were dating somebody and they were talking to their ex behind your back, and then left you for them.

KL: A lot of people on the show, if not everyone, knew he was going to break-up with Becca before she did. She was blindsided, but everyone else knew.

Bekah, you’ve been roasting and criticizing Arie on social media all week – partly for DMing you after the show was over – something that contestants don’t normally do once their time on the show ends. Has ABC implored you to cool it at all?

BM: Of course not, they love it. [Laughs.] One of the producers texted me this week and was like, Ooooh, you’re being savage tonight. That’s the only thing someone has said about it. I don’t think anyone cares. It’s a TV show! Drama is not only approved of, but encouraged. I’m sure they love it.

KL: Social media is becoming a bigger part of the show now. Honestly, Bekah and I have had arguments with fans on our Instagram pages and Twitter because we’re trying to defend each other and explain ourselves. I can’t tell you how many times people have attacked me for taxidermy without even knowing why I collect it and what I actually collect. They think I kill animals when I’ve never killed anything. For our friendship, people tell me, Oh, you shouldn’t be friends with someone like Bekah, you need other friends. Bekah is one of my good friends, what gives you the right to put her down and try to confront me about it?

BM: I’ve also been getting a lot of shit for talking about him on social media. Yeah, I’m being a dick to him on social media, and I realize that. But another thing is he decided to publicly air his dirty laundry, which leaves him open to to public critique. As someone who’s on the show and in the public eye, if I have an opinion about it, it makes sense for someone like me more so than a viewer.

It comes straight from the source.

KL: We dated him, we know him.

BM: It’s like, when your best friend is dumped by a dude, aren’t you going to be like, He’s garbage? Even if it’s not always justified, you do it because you have your girl’s back. Also, don’t DM your ex! It’s inappropriate, especially given the fact he got back with Lauren through DMs. And I wasn’t the only contestant he was DMing while the show was airing. It wasn’t just me and Lauren, there were other women as well. C’mon, dude. You’re 36, you know better. You’re not oblivious and you know how relationships work.

KL: The fact that he switched to Lauren and was still talking to other girls, it’s not great.

BM: And at the time he DM’ed me, it was close to the episode when I got sent home. It was us passionately making out and discussing our relationship. And this is the time when you’re like, Thinking of you, hope you’re doing well! I guarantee Lauren didn’t know he was messaging me. Lauren doesn’t like me.

KL: Well, especially not now.

BM: Especially not now, and I’m sure he doesn’t like me, either.

To your knowledge, has Arie maintained relationships with any of the women after the season ended? Like, cordial relationships?

KL: I don’t want to name the other girls he’s talking to. I don’t know if they’re continuing talking to him now, but before there were some.

BM: I had a cordial relationship. I messaged him when he and Becca got engaged and I told Becca I was going to do that.

KL: I made it a point not to talk to him, because making it to a certain point in the show, it might be a little bit weird if I did. But now, I don’t think I would have a problem being friends with him. I don’t wish him ill will. Once you care about someone and see a potential love with somebody, it’s hard to feel bad in some ways.

BM: Watching everything back, I feel particularly deceived by him in a way. I thought he wasn’t the type of guy who did all of the things that he did.

KL: I saw a different side of him.

BM: A bunch of his exes called him out publicly about being a cheater. One of his exes two weeks before filming tweeted out something along the lines of, “this show will be perfect for Arie, until it comes down to picking between two women.” She could not have been more spot on. This isn’t a new flaw character for him. He’s 36. As far as him talking about his age, 36 isn’t that old, but he would talk about it like, This is who I am, I’m an old man and will be for like this the rest of my life! Is he really going to change his habits? I don’t know.

Were you surprised that Bekah’s age became such a point of contention? Even when ten or so women were left, nearly all of them were a decade younger than Arie.

BM: My personality can be misinterpreted. Yeah, of course there are parts of me that are immature. Isn’t that true with most people? There’s always learning and growing to do. I know what I want, and I think my personality is mistaken for immaturity or not being ready for marriage. No, maybe it just means I have a different idea than what marriage means.

KL: Your age became an excuse to win arguments against you. You’re a strong personality and have strong opinions, and if someone is arguing with you they bring up age even if it’s irrelevant to the conversation, because it gives them that foothold in an argument. Everyone thought you were 30 when we first met you!

Now that you’ve gone through this experience together, what do you think is the biggest misconception about the show with viewers?

KL: Everyone thinks it’s scripted or that the producers can exert a lot of influence, like on UnREAL. Honestly, you’re hanging out with all of your friends, and the producers are our friends. We genuinely care about each other. We get coffee with them still.

BM: When you watch the show you don’t think about producers, or you think of them as evil masterminds behind the scenes. But producers become your best friends. You’re living with each other. I still call my favorite producer all the time and we send ourselves funny photos all the time. I sobbed harder leaving the show hugging one of the producers than I did with Arie. We were holding each other, both crying, I’m gonna miss you so much!

KL: Honestly, every single one of the girls who were on the show would do it again. Even Krystal. They’d all do it again.

BM: I wouldn’t want to do it again.

KL: Oh, you’d be on The Bachelor again. Like, you don’t regret being on it. No one regrets being on it.

Would you two ever want to be Bachelorettes?

KL: Yeah, I think so. I believe in it. You definitely can find love in that situation. There’s no negativity. Of course there’s drama, there’s going to be heartache and all that, but at the end of the day, it’s an amazing experience with amazing people. I don’t see any negative with it.

One of the producers texted me this week and was like, Ooooh, you’re being savage tonight.

BM: I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and, just personally, I don’t know what I want to do with my life and I don’t know if I want to be “Bekah from The Bachelor” forever. When you do something like The Bachelorette, that’s it, you’re Bekah from The Bachelorette. Even years later, if I was to see Ali Fedotowsky in public — that was the first season I ever watched — I’d be like, Oh my god, that’s Ali from The Bachelor. It doesn’t go away.

Will you two be going to Paradise at least?

KL: We don’t know yet because they’re still filming The Bachelorette, and Paradise films around June. So they’re not doing a lot for that right now.

BM: They just started reaching out to people. We’ll probably be on it. We’re excited because who knows who’s going to be coming from Becca’s season.

KL: Something funny is that people always try to pair you up with previous contestants or people who are in the Bachelor world. I’ve had so many people say, Kendall and Peter should date or Kendall and Ben should date.

BM: I got Dean for awhile.

KL: It’s a funny world.

BM: Dating within the franchise, though, is a whole thing, too. It seems like a lot of pressure.

KL: I’m not sure if I’d want to date inside the franchise, because then it becomes so public in both ways.

BM: Think about how much pressure Adam [Gottschalk] and Raven [Gates] are probably under with their relationship. You have to think — if you wanted to break up with somebody who you’re dating within the franchise, you would probably prolong the relationship longer than need be. It’s like when you have a boyfriend you’re not really into anymore but your family and friends are obsessed with him, so you keep him around longer than you should.

There’s been a lot of scrutiny with The Bachelor this season, in terms of how boring it was and how it should reinvent itself going forward to gain back viewership. How do you think the franchise could improve or progress in future seasons?

KL: I would definitely like to see more women-empowering moments. With our season, what I really loved was that all of us banded together and we all so supportive of each other. I would just love to see that. Or treating things in kindness as opposed to treating them with negativity.

BM: That wouldn’t make good TV.

KL: I know.

BM: [Laughs.] Well, structure-wise, that’s an interesting question. I didn’t watch Winter Games, but it seems like that was a really fun, dynamic structure of the show. The thing I’m happy about is, after what happened in Paradise, they’ve changed alcohol policies. That’s a behind-the-scenes thing. They were very carefully monitoring us, making sure nobody had too much to drink. I got cut off once or twice, Nope, Bekah, you can’t have anymore champagne. I was falling asleep on a couch at a rose ceremony once. But that’s good. They were very, very adamant about monitoring our alcohol content. We weren’t allowed to take shots, we could only have a certain amount of drinks per hour. The producers would come up to me sometimes and be like, Can you drink this glass of water? I think this is the first season where they started doing that, so I applaud ABC for taking those measures. But I’m sure it’s just to cover their asses legally.

It would be fun if weed was a really big part of the show. What if they had marijuana on all dates and ceremonies.

KL: That’d be too chill.

There would be no confrontations.

BM: That’s so true.

KL: Like, you know what? I don’t need a rose. This rose does not represent love to me.

BM: You know, this rose is all just a construct. All of the women are just sitting on the couch like, Honestly this is bullshit. We don’t need a man. And they all leave. But for a serious answer, I want to see more characters with more self-awareness, and I think that’s what people appreciate about both Kendall and I on the show.

KL: That’s what I’d like to change. I’d love to change forcing the proposal at the end. The show is not forcing proposals, but there is an expectation. Bachelor Nation always expects there to be a proposal or a happy ending, and that’s not realistic. With Arie, he had so much pressure to have the fairytale happy ending, because everyone expected it to be Peter. He felt like he had to make up for everything and be the perfect guy, and I feel like that pressure ultimately led him to react in a way that wasn’t favored by Bachelor Nation. If that pressure wasn’t there and he’d been allowed to have more time, or if it was more acceptable to have more time with somebody, then I think it would’ve ended a lot differently.

BM: But that’s also something that people like about the show — it’s fantasy. It’s escapism. There needs to be less shaming, too, of people not being ready to marry.

KL: Yeah, people were so mad at me because Tia went home and Tia was ready for marriage.

BM: That’s not what it’s about.

KL: It’s like, Arie had more feelings for me.

BM: He liked you better.

KL: And that’s normal. There’s people who like Tia better than me. That’s just how it is, but I didn’t like how it was because I never said, I love you, I’m ready for marriage. I didn’t like how that was the construct of the show or the expectation for me — to force myself to be that way in order to stay longer and explore a relationship with him. I wanted to stay there, selfishly, to explore a relationship with him because I saw that there could’ve been something real if I put more time into it, and I should be awarded that luxury. Every girl should.

BM: I agree. I bring up Tia because I think she’s a really great example of the show in general. She said she was falling in love with Arie on her first date, and you’re right in the sense that she was afforded more time with him because of it it. She got to continue further because she made it clear she wanted to marry him, and that’s not really fair. Just because you and I aren’t ready to marry him doesn’t mean we’re there for the wrong reasons or that we’re not serious about him. It just means we’re taking things slower — and we’re actually still taking things faster if you’re counting things in normal time of four or five weeks. After five weeks, I still don’t want to be talking about marriage with somebody, because I want to make sure I see this person in their element and interact with their family and friends and interact with me outside of this intense romantic scenario. I want to see if I could spend daily life with this person, not just “top of the Eiffel Tower” experiences.

Looking back at your experiences, do you have any regrets?

BM: I wish I had opened up more and been more open to the experience. I was like a dog pulling at the leash. I was like, I don’t want to do that. I was very resistant because I like being in control. When we would go to an airport, the producer would be holding my passport and my boarding pass. Even little things like that I didn’t like. Or when we were at the airport, we didn’t have cell phones, so if we went to the bathroom a producer would have to be a chaperone. Like kids on a field trip.

KL: It’s a controlled environment. I liked not having that responsibility and being able to focus purely on love.

BM: I liked that to some degree. But I don’t like being told what to do and I would get mad because producers would be like, Okay, seven in the morning, get camera ready. It’s time to do your interview. I wish I hadn’t resisted at every turn and been so stubborn. I wish I had just been like, Okay.

I’m assuming ABC will try to televise Arie and Lauren’s wedding. If you two get invited, will you attend?

BM: I’m not getting invited. [Laughs.]

KL: I will. Bekah might not be invited.

BM: You know how Caroline called him out at Women Tell All when she was like, I know what you did! Arie didn’t want her sitting in the audience when he came out for After the Final Rose, so she had to leave. Like, what is she going to do? Rush the stage? She screamed at him in front of the whole audience. You didn’t even see all of it. She was like, How could you?! If he didn’t want her in the audience for After the Final Rose, I highly doubt he wants me in the audience of his wedding. I mean, I wouldn’t say anything, I’d just be live tweeting it.

This interview has been edited and condensed.