EXCLUSIVE: Nick Viall and Vanessa Grimaldi on Awkward 'After the Final Rose': 'We Just Decided to Be Upfront'
Although Nick Viall happily got engaged to Vanessa Grimaldi on Monday night's Bachelor finale, some fans felt a little bit of tension between the two during the After the Final Rose special.
ET's Lauren Zima spoke to Viall and Grimaldi on Tuesday in Los Angeles, when they addressed their much scrutinized first appearance as a couple. Viall says he wouldn't change anything about their After the Final Rose special.
"Should we have? Quite honestly, all we did was answer [host] Chris' questions and Chris wanted to ask us a lot of questions about how it's been, so we just decided to be honest," Viall, 36, tells ET.
"We're not going to show up and be like -- you know, if we get asked questions like, 'Have there been difficult times?' Yeah, of course," he adds. "Our relationship so far has been me dating 29 other woman and having to watch that back while having a relationship long-distance. I don't know if you think that might be easy. It's not. We just decided to be upfront about it. We're just a very practical couple."
Viall says he and Grimaldi are "realistic" about their relationship.
"There's no guarantee," he explains. "Unfortunately, in this day and age, relationships in life are hard. Unfortunately, even after people get married, with how things are, it's not uncommon to get divorced. We're just realistic about it, and I think that's what we have going for us."
"I think sometimes when you pretend things, you play house, that can set you up for disaster," he continues. "I have the confidence we're going to face things head on, and we're OK to admit that there's a fear of things not working out, but we're going to give it our best to make sure that it does."
Grimaldi says her greatest fear about their relationship is it coming to an end.
"I wasn't going to say yes to a proposal if I wasn't sure I could picture a life with Nick," Grimaldi says. "I do picture that life. We're happy, we love each other -- of course there's things we still need to figure out. There's things we need to figure out about ourselves too after the show, but I think my fear would be it not working out in the end."
As for if the two plan to get married this year or the next, Viall says that would be "optimistic." The couple also say they haven't discussed televising the wedding, or when they want to have children.
"I don't think we're against the idea," Viall says of a televised wedding, "but I think those are conversations we'd have to have once we decided to have a wedding."
"We don't pretend that we got engaged after dating for a year, or a year and a half, or even six months," he says candidly. "We're happy that we made the decision that we did, but we're also realistic -- we're OK with knowing that we have a lot to get to know about each other. There's a lot of experiences as a couple, normal things ... that we look forward to doing -- like having dinner in public, going grocery shopping. I think we just have to experience those things before we even consider."
Watch the video below to see Viall's emotional proposal to Grimaldi on Monday's finale.