Gabby and Rachel Respond to Clayton and Susie’s Reaction to ‘The Bachelorette’ Premiere, Bullying Claims

usmagazine.com:

As Bachelor Nation — and Susie Evans — continue to reel over the Clayton Echard shade during the season 19 premiere of The Bachelorette, Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia are sharing their sides of the story.“Of course, no one was ever using his name maliciously or to be mean or bully him,” Rachel, 26, said exclusively on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast after the Monday, July 11, premiere. “We would’ve maybe liked to hear it a little less.

I’m sure he would’ve as well, but it was just all kind of in good fun in a way to try to connect with us since the only time [the contestants] ever saw us was on his season.”Gabby, 31, added that the two leads “understand” if Clayton and Susie didn’t love all of the digs at the former football player — which included a children’s choir singing “Clayton sucks” on Monday’s episode.“I hope it doesn’t really play like that.

I mean, in the moment, you know, Rachel and I were like, ‘Man, I wish we could kind of talk about something else.’ But it was literally just a week prior that [The Bachelor] had ended and everybody saw the ending at AFR.

So it’s still so fresh,” the nurse explained. “So I think watching it back this many months later is why it also has kind of a bigger feel to it, [like], ‘Why now?’ But you also have to remember when we were filming, it was really fresh.