Yahoo Sports Chris Harrison says Mike Fleiss removed him from Paradise after-show in 2016 to 'send a message'
Chris Harrison is gone from the Bachelor franchise, but he still has plenty to say about his former boss.
First, the host called Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss "a narcissist" on the April 10 episode of The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever with Chris Harrison, and this week Harrison returned to the topic during an interview with beloved Bachelor couple Catherine and Sean Lowe.
About 30 minutes into the episode, Harrison and Lowe began discussing After Paradise, the live (and short-lived) Bachelor in Paradise after show which premiered on ABC in the summer of 2015. Harrison hosted the first season, but when After Paradise returned in 2016, Lowe and comedian Michelle Collins stepped in as co-hosts at the last minute — leaving fans confused. On Most Dramatic Podcast, Harrison informed his longtime Bachelor buddy that Fleiss made the decision to oust him as a "negotiating ploy" because he was angry about Harrison's new game-show hosting gig.
"I had just started doing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? They were not happy about that, for some reason," Harrison told Lowe. "My thought was, it's a game show. It's not at all going to hurt the Bachelor series. There's nothing bad about this. But they just didn't love that I was going to go and do something else. So to kind of send a message to me, right after that, in the middle of that — we had knock-down, drag-out, blow-up fights and negotiations about this — they call me... They're like, 'Hey, you know, we just feel like it's kind of too inside-baseball for you to host those after-shows, so we're going to bring Sean in.' That was an absolute shot across the bow of like, 'Hey pal, you can be replaced at any time. We want to put you in your place.'" (Side note: All of this jibes with the reporting I did at the time about the sudden After Paradise switcheroo.)
Harrison, who later clarified that it was Fleiss who called to tell him he wasn't going to host After Paradise season 2, assured Lowe that he bore no "ill-will" toward him, because he knew that the former Bachelor wasn't aware of Fleiss' behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Indeed, Lowe explained to Harrison that Fleiss told him that the host couldn't do the show due to scheduling conflicts. "I had no idea that they were trying to send a message to you," he added.
"What they told you was an absolute lie," Harrison replied. "100 percent not true."
Listen to the full interview below.
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