Sean McLaughlin has opened up about his fight with Katherine "Kat" Izzo and what he wishes he had done differently.
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When Kat wouldn't join forces with Sean and appeared to be against his scheming and plotting, the pair got into a big fight.
Sean couldn't believe Kat had turned her back on him, but Kat questioned Sean's character and whether she could trust him.
"I think it was a game of telephone that spiraled out of control and then it came to a front with the Kat conversation," Sean explained during a recent appearance on the "Bachelor Happy Hour" podcast.
Sean had told Kat on the show during their argument, "I've done nothing but stick my neck out for you when everyone else says [stuff]. I have done nothing but defend you consistently."
Kat had replied, "I don't need you to protect me... And at the end of the day, it just came off shady."
Sean had slammed all of the "secrecy bullsh-t," adding, "I will tell you exactly how I feel to your f-cking face. It's crazy, this switch-up that you're doing right now."
"This switch-up?" Kat had fired back. "Yeah, I've let you disrespect me and curse at me. I tried to be kind and understanding, but I'm not going to sit here anymore and let you do that."
Sean told Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt on their podcast that the fight was explosive because he and Kat had been friends for two-and-a-half years prior to filming Bachelor in Paradise.
When asked what exactly caused the demise of his friendship with Kat, Sean replied, "I actually still [don't] know the answer to that."
Sean said he has friends in Bachelor Nation whom he'll occasionally hang out with, but "Kat was a real friend outside of this."
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' FRANCHISE COUPLES NOWHe recalled, "We talked pretty frequently on the phone. We caught up before Paradise when she was in Tampa before the holidays. And I met her sister, so she was an actual friend."
Sean believes that in Kat's mind, he was "trying to get people to turn against her" -- which Sean insisted "was never the case."
"If I didn't win, I wanted Kat to win the money," Sean said.
"I think it was just a game of telephone, and, again, I don't necessarily know all the details. We don't get to see everything. But I think it was more so... people were trying to get the target off their back, so then it shifted onto me."
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Sean thinks the situation snowballed into people saying, "You can't trust him."
"It kind of went awry, and I just felt pretty betrayed at that moment, and I was like, 'Ugh, the one person I thought I could trust' -- but I honestly don't know what happened," Sean admitted.
"I don't know if I'll ever truly know the situation."
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Sean, however, acknowledged how his Bachelor in Paradise strategy was setting Kat up for success.
"I think she thought I couldn't be trusted in general because I was talking so strategically," Sean said.
"But in reality, the only people who should've been mad about that were [Jess Edwards] and [Spencer Conley]... But once they saw that I was rubbing people the wrong way, they piled on."
Sean claimed that people were gossiping about him and then rumors spread.
"There was some stuff that I got told that people thought I said, and I was like, 'I never said that!' They said I was saying mean things to [Jonathon Johnson], and I was like, 'I never said anything mean to Jonathon at all,'" Sean insisted.
Sean also didn't think he had cussed Kat out, like she claimed to the rest of the cast.
"I think I used a cuss word, saying, 'I would never do that to you,' but at that point, I didn't even care," Sean recalled.
Sean said when Kat ran back to Dale Moss to tell him about their fight, he was so over it.
"I felt so betrayed. No one was looking at me. No one would look me in the eye, and no one was coming up to me. It was really awkward," Sean lamented.
"I just wanted to go with [Allyshia Gupta] and be done with it, the whole situation. So I was like, 'Yeah, I'm done. It's not even worth an argument.'"
Sean acknowledged, "Paradise wasn't fun anymore," especially since people started to assume he couldn't talk about anything but the game for $500,000.
"I could've been talking about the birds. I was talking about peptides once with Dale and they were like, 'He's talking strategy,'" Sean complained.
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When looking back on how he handled things, Sean said there's one thing he wishes he'd done differently.
"I wish that I would've been a little bit more aware of where people's alliances were, and I think, looking back at it, me and Allyshia were in a really tough spot from the get-go," Sean explained.
"I was the last guy to come in. She was the last girl. I had zero people from [Charity Lawson's The Bachelorette] season there. I had none of my friends. My true friends outside of this, no one was there."
Sean said he didn't even have a roommate while filming Bachelor in Paradise's tenth season.
"I didn't have anyone. I was just by myself, so when you add that element to the game, we were really far behind," Sean acknowledged.
"I probably should've just shut up once in awhile and just played in the shadows a little bit more, but that was a part of the strategy, too."
Sean continued: "Because if it got down to the end and I'm open about it -- and I'm not stabbing my friends in the back, which I wouldn't have -- then you might be able to win a vote from the audience or however it's going to end."
Sean and Allyshia ultimately self-eliminated from Paradise, knowing the majority of the cast had probably voted them out anyway.
When Sean was exiting the game, he yelled out, "Dale, I love you, but Kat, don't call me crying after this one ends."
Allyshia also vented about Kat in her final words.
"Kat is an absolute joke of a human being. Sean came in here defending you every single day... and it was you that painted a narrative that wasn't true," Allyshia claimed.
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Sean also insisted he would've died for Kat before she betrayed him.
"Dale is going to leave Kat the moment this sh-t ends. Everyone knows that," Sean told the cameras. "Kat is a little bit delusional at this point, but if you cross me, I hold a grudge. So watch out."
Allyshia recently alleged on "The Viall Files" that Kat had a boyfriend back home -- and was secretly messaging him -- while filming Bachelor in Paradise.
Allyshia predicted that Kat is going to "deny, lie and cry" about the allegation. Dale, for his part, reacted to Allyshia's allegations on the "Bachelor Happy Hour" podcast earlier this week.
A preview of the Bachelor in Paradise finale showed Sean returning to the resort and putting Kat on blast about her motive for going on the show.
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
