The reality star left the beach in the penultimate episode after his actions were revealed.
Ivan Hall is speaking out. Weeks after the dramatic penultimate episode of Bachelor in Paradise, Ivan appeared on Nick Viall's Viall Files podcast to address his drama on the show, which largely centered around him sneaking off to meet Alexa, a Paradise hopeful who'd yet to arrive on the beach.
"You sign up to have your love story shown on TV. Having good relationships with some of the [producers], I definitely felt bad," Ivan said. "I definitely went around that and didn't give them the opportunity to film it... I'm definitely very apologetic to them."
After feuding with Aaron over Chelsea, and seemingly being caught in a lie about approaching Chelsea first, Ivan's situation worsened when guest host Wells Adams pulled him to chat.
Wells previously told ET that the conversation he and Ivan had was "the most insane" moment of Paradise, something that eventually proved true when the episode aired.
"I'm like, 'Oh boy. They found out,'" Ivan said of what he was thinking when Wells pulled him. "I didn't know right away, but once he said, 'Something happened at the hotel,' I'm like, 'Oh god. Oh god. All right. We're about to go figure this out.'"
"I just came clean about everything. I knew in that moment I was going to be fully honest and transparent about what happened at the hotel the night before," he continued. "It was actually a much longer conversation than what was aired."
It was during that conversation that viewers learned that, when Paradise was evacuated and contestants were sent to a hotel to ride out a storm, Ivan snuck off to visit Alexa.
"I was really in a place where I was kind of feeling lost here, in Paradise," Ivan told Wells. "I was honestly feeling lost. I had no connections. I didn’t know where to go, really."
Ivan said that he'd been hoping to meet Alexa on the beach and assumed he'd be going home after his latest love interest, Kendall, sent herself home.
"Out of the people that I kind of knew were going to Paradise, she was actually the person I was most interested in meeting," he said on Viall Files. "... Just based on the few conversations we had pre-Paradise, I thought she was a great person, had a great personality. We had a really good energy around each other, on the phone at least."
"I'd never met her in person or anything like that, never set any expectations with her, but that's kind of where my mindset was at with Alexa," Ivan continued. "I thought, 'Man, she's not here,' because I was hoping she was going to be there."
When Ivan was feeling all those feelings, the cast was sent to a hotel amid a tropical storm. He was rooming with Noah at the hotel, and the pair took the opportunity to ask producers for inside information.
"Me and Noah are just hanging out, we're un-mic'd, we're just hanging out, we're playing loud music, just messing around, having a good time. Producers are in-and-out, they're having a good time with us. We're all just talking," Ivan recalled. "But of course we're asking, 'Hey, is there anyone else here that I might be interested in? Am I just going to be leaving?' Of course they're not telling me anything at all, but you're going to ask the question."
Though the producers wouldn't answer the question, an opportunity soon presented itself.
"A producer said to both of us she was going to leave and be right back. When she leaves, her phone is sitting on the chair she was sitting on and then me and Noah look at each other like, 'What in the world is going on?'" Ivan said. "... I pick up the phone. The phone, no joke, is unlocked and it has the list of names and room numbers. I do not press swipe up, I don't type in a code, it's just on the screen."
While Ivan admitted he had to scroll to find Alexa's room number, he said he "didn't go through" the phone at all. He soon saw Alexa's name and figured out that her room wasn't too far away.
"It's getting later in the night and I'm like, 'F it. I'm just gonna go say what's up to her,'" Ivan said. "Noah fully knew. This is fully my actions that I took, but if anyone else was my roommate, I definitely wouldn't have gone. Noah's definitely a little bit mischievous."
Sporting a baseball cap, hoodie and mask in an effort to stay "incognito," Ivan made his way to Alexa's room. Though she didn't recognize him at first, they soon hit it off.
"We just spent the whole night together. We were on her balcony talking for hours. It was a long time, like four hours I'd say we were out there. We had great conversation, absolutely great conversation. It was a great time," Ivan said. "As far as hooking up, we never made it past kissing. We only kissed and made out, of course, and just had a lot of great conversation. It was really a good night."
"We both felt a little bit mischievous. It was kind of cool we got to both meet each other. It was everything I hoped it would be, especially that first night," he added. "... In the back of my mind I'm like, 'Man, I'm about to leave here without getting to meet her on the beach.' The next day that was kind of another bummer in the back of my head."
The pair was eventually found out by an ill-planned wake-up call.
"[Alexa] set a five or six a.m. wake-up call. We kind of did that as a fail-safe, in case I fell asleep over there. I was not in a good place at the end of Paradise. It was not the logical thing to do," he said. "... I also don't know if I cared that much at that point, to be quite frank. I was like, 'I'm leaving tomorrow. None of this actually matters.'"
Despite happening to "hit it off" with Alexa, Ivan said on BiP that his decision was "wrong."
"I shouldn’t have gone around the system," Ivan said during the episode. "My mind was just in a weird place, and I was wrong. Love makes you do weird, crazy things. I made a mistake and it was a giant mistake."
As for if he and Alexa have kept in touch post-Paradise, Ivan told Nick, that they're "still friends" today, adding that, from his point of view, "she has no regrets about how things played out and really enjoyed the night."
When it comes to his love life, Ivan said he thinks he's "retired" from the Bachelor franchise, but has one romantic prospect as of late.
"It's a little bit early on right now," he said of his mystery love interest. "... When I feel the time is right, I might come out and show her off a little bit. We'll see."
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