Bachelor in Paradise alum Tammy Ly has explained why she lashed out at the franchise earlier this year when she claimed she was "done" with the show and producers play "favorites."
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Tammy, who competed on Peter Weber's The Bachelor season and failed to find love on Bachelor in Paradise's seventh season last year, clarified during Tuesday's episode of the magazine "Here for the Right Reasons" podcast that she went on a tangent earlier this year to finally put her "foot down and stop being used."
The 26-year-old realtor explained, "People think that I have this vendetta against this franchise now. I really don't."
"I'm grateful for the opportunity," she insisted. "I'm grateful to have been a part of it. I wouldn't have traded it for anything in this world, but it's the frustrations that I was having that a lot of people do and they just don't vocalize it because they're so afraid."
Tammy was portrayed as a bit of a drama queen and pot-stirrer on The Bachelor's 24th season, and she was also shown betraying Aaron Clancy on Bachelor in Paradise to pursue Thomas Jacobs, who ended up pursuing her friend and former The Bachelorette star Becca Kufrin instead.
"What happened to me is that I just had it with them, and I'm very vocal and opinionated about it. I was gonna let my viewers know, like, what's going on instead of stay quiet. I'm not a person that stays quiet, as we clearly know," Tammy said on the podcast.
"And I just got really upset. Would I have done it differently all over again? Absolutely. I think I should have, you know, worked through my emotions THEN said something, but I was so hurt and upset at that time. I was like, 'I'm just going to go for it.'"
Tammy apparently stands by the fact that producers play favorites and shine flattering and positive light on them when filming The Bachelor, The Bachelorette or one of its spinoffs.
"You can just tell whom they favorite, and I wasn't one of them... Nothing is fair in this world," Tammy noted.
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Tammy claimed she didn't stand a fighting chance on Paradise because she doesn't co-host a Bachelor Nation podcast like Becca, Joe Amabile, Natasha Parker, Tia Booth and others.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW"I'm not a secondary person. I'm a primary person in my life. I put myself first and it was time for me to stop catering to them," Tammy shared.
"A lot of people supported me [at the time], which made me so happy... I was reading all these messages and I didn't expect it to be like that because I'm like, 'Everyone in this franchise hates me anyways.' So what did I have to lose? Nothing."
She added how she's "happy" to "distance" herself from the franchise "for now."
"Who knows if I'll be back, who knows what's gonna happen in the future," Tammy noted, although she dubbed her dynamic with the show a "toxic relationship."
"I just need to give myself space right now, and maybe we can work on things in the future -- if there are any changes that are legitimate that they want to change," Tammy said.
When asked what the show could do differently to give all of its cast members a fair shot and a fair edit, Tammy noted how production has already made some progress in steering away from casting just "the generic, all-American girl" following the Black Lives Matter movement.
"The changes that they're saying they're doing, I want to actually see them being implemented in a serious way, and not just be like, 'Oh, yeah, we're doing this, like, it's fine, we're at least trying.' But you can try harder, you have the power to try harder," Tammy explained.
"I just feel so alienated from it. I worked hard to get where I have gotten in that franchise and it just went so unnoticed. And I wonder if it would've been more noticed if I looked like the all-American girl."
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Tammy, however, admitted, "I get it," given she had "gravitated toward those girls too" when filming Bachelor in Paradise last summer.
"But like, that's the reason why I had a major identity crisis when I was a kid because I want to look blonde, blue-eyed -- these beautiful girls that I thought were the American version of beauty," Tammy said.
Tammy got emotional and confessed that she hates talking about race.
"But it really made me feel like I was so alienated because it's something that I can't change about myself, you know? Like, I will never be blonde. I could dye my hair, but that would look really weird. I look like a K-pop star," Tammy joked.
"And there's just very few people that represent people who look like me in that franchise. And I really tried to fight hard to be that person that represents a lot of us that are out there. I just felt really frustrated because I put in a lot of work and I felt like it was just for nothing."
Tammy had been working on a project with the franchise that's no longer happening, according to Us. A disagreement allegedly hurt Tammy's feelings and sent the project into the trash.
"I don't get my feelings hurt that easily, but yeah, it hurt... Both cast and behind-the-scenes people, I mean, they're not happy with it, but they can understand why I'm upset," Tammy noted, confirming there had been some sort of falling out.
But Tammy insisted she has some big things on the horizon, and she "may or may not be on another show."
"You guys will find out when the rest of the world finds out," she teased. "A lot is going on and I'm just trying to live my life and create an empire."
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
