Courtney Robertson approves comparisons to Bachelor Maria

Courtney Robertson approves it Bachelor education season 28 contestant Maria Georgas anticipating a cue from her playbook Joey Graziadei‘s birthplaces.

“I really see it between them, [but] I think the process is starting to get to her. She played the, you know, “I might leave” card, which was well played. I did that just before the residences. … Like, ‘Let me stay.’ … It’s almost like you’re trying to get more out of the Bachelor to tell me how you feel about me,” Courtney began. Our weekly’S Podcast ‘Here for the right reasons’ as we recap the Monday, February 26 episode of the ABC show.

Courtney – who won Ben Flajnik’season 16 of The Bachelor after being painted as the villain in the house – she noted that she had contacted Maria earlier this season.

“She was nice, and I just said, ‘Hey, if you need anything.’ [Because] I thought, ‘Oh, she might get a villain adaptation.’ But I don’t think she understood it at all [in the end]. And I really like her style. I think she’s an introvert. That’s what she said [and] I’m also a real homebody. And throughout the process, I can’t wait to hear more of her side of the story. And she’s such TV gold too. I’m sure they pulled her into interviews all the time,” Courtney said. “[She’s] so funny. She’s so confident. And as soon as the girls started kind of working against her, that was so close for me, because the girls did that with me and ran to the Bachelor and were like, ‘Oh, she’s this or that.’ So I felt for her. I thought, ‘I’ve been through that.’ And my bachelor, I remember him saying to the girls, ‘Well, what’s she doing?’ … They just didn’t like me. There was no real, like, ‘Oh, she did this or X, Y and Z.’ So I’m glad it didn’t affect his perception of her. It’s very similar to my storyline and then she’s like, “Hey, I don’t know.”

Courtney recalled feeling “nervous” looking at her hometown, and that testing for The Bachelor is a bit “self-sabotage” because it becomes too real. Although Joey didn’t really prank Maria, Courtney thinks Maria played her return well.

“She apologized. Whatever producer was talking to her in that bathroom gets a gold medal because they show her crying and talking to someone and they said, ‘This isn’t working,'” Courtney suggested. “She dealt with it well, she came back. And then she got what happened to me during my season. …I pulled off the ‘let me stay,’ and then he pulled me aside at the rose ceremony and said, ‘I need to know [that] if I take you, you stay.” And I mean, you see her bounce when he says, “Can I talk to you?” She immediately looks: ‘Oh, this is exciting.’ She didn’t look concerned and said, “Oh, he’s going to send me home.” So it’s nice that she was given that extra time.”

Courtney agreed Us that the music plays a role in how the audience feels about a contestant, repeating, “They could have easily made Maria the bad guy.”

Related: The biggest bachelor scandals of all time

From breakups to makeup and everything in between, Bachelor Nation has seen it all — and it hasn’t always been pretty. Loyal fans of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette often do their best to uncover secrets from the contestants’ pasts as they search for love on the ABC reality franchise. During Matt James’ historic season, […]

“They could have easily played the bad music when the girls tried to make her out to be the bully,” she said. “And then she says, ‘Hey, I got bullied [in my life].’ And they could easily not have shown the music they played [comment] and they gave her a positive edit there.

Courtney isn’t the only one to defend Maria after she had issues with Madina Alam, Sydney Gordon And Leah Cayanan.

“I couldn’t see the group settings. I think Maria can be misunderstood sometimes,” Joey said Us earlier this month. “I understand that she explained that herself – that she is a bit rough and was surprised that she didn’t get along with a lot of women in the house.”

The Bachelor airs on ABC Mondays at 8pm ET.