Arie of The Bachelor: I Was '100%' Betrayed by Show Producers

It took some time for the din from March's Bachelor finale—after Arie Luyendyk Jr. dumped the girl he initially chose, Becca Kufrin, and got engaged to runner-up Lauren Burnham—to subside. Now, however, thanks to Kufrin's stint as the current Bachelorette and a new profile on Luyendyk in GQ, "the most hated bachelor in America" is back in the spotlight. Rebecca Nelson spent two days in Scottsdale, Ariz., with the 36-year-old and Burnham, a "reserved" 26-year-old, and Luyendyk insists he was made into a villain by the crew and feels "100%" betrayed. He's especially irked about the supposedly unedited footage of his breakup with Kufrin, which he says was more staged than suggested. Viewers had raged that Luyendyk wouldn't leave after Kufrin told him to. "It was completely edited," he says. "I was told to stay on that couch. I tried to leave, and then production was like, 'You need to go back inside.'"

Still, Luyendyk understands the producers' role ("it's their job to make it entertaining for people"), and the rest of Nelson's stay involved tagging along with the couple as they went house hunting, hearing about how Luyendyk ended up on the show in the first place in 2011—he was a fill-in for a last-minute dropout—and learning about Luyendyk's thought process as he struggled to choose between two women. Nelson's visit with the couple didn't end on a great note: After a one-on-one with Burnham in which Nelson revealed to Burnham (who hadn't watched the finale) about a comment Kufrin had made about how she'd "challenge [Luyendyk] a lot more" than Burnham, Nelson got a text from Luyendyk. "I don't know how the conversation went on your end but Lauren is really upset," he wrote. "I think our interview is done." (Read the full story here.)