The Bachelorette spoke with ET ahead of Tuesday's jaw-dropping season premiere.
Clare Crawley says she never quit The Bachelorette. Tuesday night's premiere of the ABC dating show saw Clare storming off, while a voice commented about her leaving -- but that doesn't mean she quit, she told ET's Lauren Zima.
"I did not quit the show," she said on Tuesday. "I stayed the whole time, I went, I did what I was going to do there. I showed up, I didn't quit anything."
ET learned on Aug. 3 that Clare's time as Bachelorette had come to an end after she fell for one of her contestants roughly two weeks into filming. Tayshia Adams was brought in as a new lead. A source told ET at the time that Clare ended her journey early on good terms with producers, but said viewers would have to wait to see how everything played out until the show debuted in October. As Bachelor Nation fans have seen in recent seasons, "anything can happen" when it comes to the Bachelor franchise.
Rumors ran wild, with fans speculating about how Clare's journey could end so quickly. One of those rumors was that she locked herself in a closet and refused to participate in the show any longer.
"I can promise you I did not lock myself in a closet," Clare told ET. "That was one [rumor] I heard that I was throwing a fit and I locked myself in a closet."
So, the closet scenario didn't happen, but it seems Clare did make her feelings clear. When ET spoke with host Chris Harrison earlier this month, he confirmed that she wasn't "wasting time" this season.
"She came into this unbelievably sincere and serious about finding love, finding a man, and it really wasn't about the pomp and circumstance for her. It wasn't about all the pageantry. It was about coming in and finding somebody, and I really respect the fact that this woman knows exactly what she wants and she is not afraid to go get it," Chris added, describing Clare's season as a "pressure cooker."
"What we really learned was, at the end of the day, it is about the stories. It's about the romance. It's about Clare going on this journey. These guys coming in... they were kind of entering the unknown. It made things very intense," he said.
The Bachelorette premieres Tuesday, Oct. 13 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
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