Litia Garr is speaking out for the first time since Grant Ellis blindsided her on the season finale of The Bachelor.
Bachelor Nation watched Grant, 31, break up with Litia, also 31, and propose to Juliana Pasquarosa on the March 24 episode of the dating series. Litia alleged at the time that Grant repeatedly gave her reassurance that she was The One. She shed more light on the claims during an appearance on the “Relationsh*t with Kamie Crawford” podcast.
“He was saying things like, ‘I can’t wait for the cameras to go away and we can just be together. I just want to hang out and talk and chat and not feel like we have to talk about heavy stuff all the time,’” Litia recalled of their final night together before the final rose. “We had light moments, but the things that were shown definitely were the most important things that were being discussed.”
“When leaving my suite, I was like, ‘OK, I’ll see you tomorrow. I can’t believe it, like, we’re getting engaged,’ because of all the things he had just said to me during the whole conversation,” she continued. “He was like, ‘I know. I can’t wait. I love you. I love you. I love you,’ when he was being, like, rushed out the door.”
While Litia was confident, she did note that Grant could’ve been “people pleasing.” When she arrived for the proposal, however, she thought he would definitely pick her if he didn’t stop her when she went to speak. (The Bachelor or Bachelorette often prevents their runner-up from declaring their love on finale day, but that’s not always the case.)
“I stood there and I was like, ‘If it’s not me, he won’t let me speak.’ After everything that he said, hopefully he would just let me know before I do my big declaration — he knows what I’m about to say,” Litia said. “And we stood there for a minute, and he was like, ‘They told me to let you talk first.’ He, like, prompted me to give my speech. And so I was like, ‘Oh, OK, like, great. I’ll just say everything that I need to say.'”
When the podcast cohost pointed out that Grant “also kissed” her when she arrived, Litia said “that was the other thing.”
“There’s, like, a million things the whole time why I thought it was gonna go a different way, but that was the part to me, on the drive away from the breakup, I was like, ‘He asked me to give the speech,’” she said.
Related: ‘The Bachelor’ Season 29 Contestant Litia Garr’s Family Guide
One of Litia’s other sticking points on the finale was that Grant had given her a journal to write down her feelings during the process, claiming he said he wanted them to read it together post-show. (Juliana, 28, has since said that Grant also gave her a journal.)
“I don’t know everyone’s conversations with him. … Why would you give multiple women journals and ask them to write down all their feelings for you so you can read through it at the end? Why would you ask multiple women to do that?” Litia said on the podcast. “That seems to me like a stroke of the ego, so that you know everyone is really dwelling and sitting in this Grant, Kool-Aid world.”
Litia confirmed that she still has the journal. She then revealed that their breakup conversation lasted “45 minutes,” which is rare for The Bachelor.
“Typically, what I’ve been told is, it’s, like, a five minute conversation. They want it to be quick,” she said. “He was standing there talking at me. Me saying, like, ‘Come on now.’ I was, like, looking for him. Like, ‘Where are you? Wait, what? Come on, come back.’ It’s not me, but have a conversation with me about it and actually talk to me. And it was just him trying to manage my perception of him more than him walking me through how he got there.”
Litia said she hasn’t heard from Grant and doesn’t expect to. She did admit that she’s seen all of his post-show interviews. (The day after the finale, Grant told Us Weekly that he doesn’t “align” with Litia’s claims about their relationship.)
Related: Everything Grant and Juliana Have Said About Litia After ‘Bachelor’ Finale
“He’s doing his best to be a good partner to the person he’s in a relationship with now. And so I think that’s kind of the place where he’s coming from with all this,” Litia said to Kamie Crawford. “To me, everything that I said on the couch After the Final Rose, I said during our breakup. I knew that I signed up to be a part of a TV show, and that that came with an audience that was invested in the story of our relationship. … I just kind of wanted to add context to why I was surprised.”
She reiterated that she understands why Grant is “approaching” post-show press the way he is, but she doesn’t “agree” with it.
“At the end of the day, I know what happened, and my reality is aligned with the camera operators’ reality and the audio person who listened to the mic and everyone in post-production who edited the show. They’re all aligned,” Litia explained. “I’ve talked to producers who were there, and I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone. This happened six months ago for me, and so I was happy to discuss it at After the Final Rose for the benefit of everyone who had watched and was invested in the story. But it doesn’t matter to me what anyone else’s perception is, because I know that it’s real. … As soon as I know I’m not crazy, that’s fine.”
Litia also wanted to make it clear that Grant saying “I love you” is not the issue since that typically happens on The Bachelor. “I think that is your feelings, and that’s valid. And I think we’ve seen it over and over that that’s something that’s possible. You can be in love with two people. It’s the other promises,” she concluded.
