The 25-year-old musician allegedly had a girlfriend while appearing on Hannah Brown's season.
Jed Wyatt is making headlines again -- this time for allegedly having a serious girlfriend while dating Hannah Brown on The Bachelorette.
The Nashville-based musician confessed to Brown on the show that he signed up to further his music career, but said he had developed real feelings for her. Now, his alleged ex-girlfriend, Haley Stevens, is speaking out, and former Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe told ET she's not surprised by the situation.
"When I heard that, I was like, 'Yeah, I was waiting for that.' I was waiting for someone to have a girlfriend," she told ET's Lauren Zima during a sit-down interview with her boyfriend, Jason Tartick, on Tuesday. "It happens every season."
According to Stevens, who is also a musician living in Nashville, she and Wyatt dated for four months before he headed off to film The Bachelorette in early March. She claimed to People that when Wyatt got the call he'd be appearing on the show in February, they enjoyed a romantic vacation together to the Bahamas, where he allegedly told her he loved her. Stevens also claimed they spent the night together before he headed to Los Angeles, and said Wyatt only hoped to make it to the top five to gain name recognition for his career. Though Stevens alleged Wyatt told her he'd call her after the show, he never did. She claimed she confronted him in Nashville earlier this month, where he had no explanation. ET has reached out to ABC and Warner Bros. for comment.
Wyatt is a clear frontrunner on Brown's season of The Bachelorette, which finished filming last month. He was many fans' favorite to win Brown's heart. "I wonder if he can talk about it or say something," said Bristowe, who now hosts the podcast Off the Vine, and has started her own wine label, Spade and Sparrows. "You can't judge anyone for it, because sometimes you really have no idea you're going to fall in love on that show... He admitted he had different intentions going into the show."
Tartick added that he "stuck up" for Wyatt after the 25-year-old revealed his music dreams to Brown. "I thought it was great to be proactive about what you're doing," he reasoned, before noting the alleged situation has gotten exponentially more complicated.
"I think if you now correlate him openly putting it out there that his only intention was to promote his music business and then you couple that with some of the comments that his girlfriend is now saying about the night before, [it gets complicated]," Tartick explained. "Then you tie in the twist of the gentleman that was there night one who had a girlfriend, and you saw Hannah's reaction [to that]."
In an interview with ET earlier this month, Brown defended Wyatt coming on the show to raise his profile as a musician.
"When a guy walks in with a guitar, they're notorious for... you're always [suspicious] of something," she shared. "But all I've wanted is someone to be honest and real with me, and he was that. And so, he did exactly what I asked for him to do. I admired that."
"I have a strong connection with Jed, and so for me, that was really important to hear from his mouth that 'Hey, this is why I came on,' because ultimately, none of those guys knew it was really me that was going to be the lead when they signed up for this show," she explained. "So for him to say, 'Hey, I didn't know who it was going to be. This is why I came on the show, but now I really do have feelings for you,' that, I feel like, was even harder to do."
Brown said she "appreciated" him owning up to his intentions. "I felt like it was like, 'Alright, I already kind of knew, so now we can focus on our relationship,'" she concluded.
The rest of the Bachelorette cast also seems to hold Wyatt in high regard. Many of Brown's other contestants recently promoted one of Wyatt's concerts on their social media. During an appearance on ET's Roses and Rose Live on Tuesday, castoff Devin Harris said Wyatt has become one of his closest friends from the show, and he considers him to be a genuine guy.
"It would be disingenuous to say you just met somebody and you're in love with them on the second date," he said, alluding to another controversial contestant, Luke Parker.
See more in the video below.
The Bachelorette airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. Join ET's Bachelor Nation Facebook group here.
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