'Bachelorette' Star Greg Grippo Speaks Out for the First Time Since Intense Finale

Greg Grippo is breaking his silence on that intense Bachelorette finale and After the Final Rose special.

During his guest appearance on Nick Viall's podcast, The Viall Files, on Tuesday, the reality star opened up about his shocking exit from the show and his tense reunion with Katie Thurston. When it comes to watching his breakup play out on TV, Greg admitted to Nick, "I hate watching that back."

"That hometown [date] made me really upset, truthfully," he recalled. "I was so eager to try to get on the same page as her, but it didn’t come off that way. I came off angry, like a child. It was very immature for me… we can't normalize that behavior. I was pretty ashamed of it all."

"Maybe it wasn't the healthiest relationship in the world because I was depending on her for happiness and that wasn't fair to her," he continued. "I want to be in a position where I'm completely happy with myself before I get into another relationship."

Greg added that he "sadly" wasn't looking at everything from Katie's point of view at the time. "Looking back on it, watching for the second time with all the viewers, yeah it came off like an a**," he said. "I came off like a petulant child at times. I regret it because she didn't deserve that. I definitely projected a lot of my insecurities and my anger on her. At the end of the day, it wasn’t fair to her."

In case you missed it, Katie said goodbye to Greg after he reached his "breaking point" following a dramatic ending to Hometowns, and later accepted a proposal from Blake Moynes during Monday's season finale of The Bachelorette. The After the Final Rose special then saw Katie have an awkward conversation with Greg, in which she called him a liar during their reunion.

"I never felt that you actually intended to probably ever get engaged in that journey together," she said at the time. "You’re saying that I’m not validating you enough, but it’s like, you got a first impression rose, you got a first one-on-one, a second one-on-one, every single group date."

"In the moment I’m not realizing this, but I’m watching it back, I am giving you validation every single week," she added. "For that hometown to go as perfectly as it did until the very end, and for you to do a 180, I feel like you were looking for the perfect opportunity to escape because you were never ready for an engagement."

Katie continued on, telling Greg, "I filled a hole in your heart. The small second that things got awkward for you, uncomfortable, you ran. You're a liar. If you think that’s love, you don’t know what love is."

Speaking to ET on Tuesday, Blake addressed his new fiancée's confrontation with Greg and what it was like seeing their romantic interactions play out on the show.

"Katie told me everything prior, all the details, every little conversation, so I wasn't going in blind to anything," he shared. "Aside from that, I came on the season very, very confident. The first time I met her I had zero doubts and when I left here I literally had zero doubts."

"If you didn't have the confidence, I think that would be a tough thing to watch. I knew it was going to be me, it was supposed to be me, so as much as those things can be cringey at times to watch, I'm also very understanding of the position she's in and being empathetic of, 'What would I do in that situation?' I probably would have done a lot of the same things, so I can't be mad at her for that."

Hear more in the video below.

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