Katherine "Kat" Izzo has responded to a Bachelor in Paradise co-star's allegation she was a bully during filming.
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"I want to read you a DM I got from one of your peers," Nick told Kat.
"I'm so scared," Kat admitted.
"Well, it's hard, but I want to give you a heads up," Nick acknowledged.
"Is it going to hurt my feelings?" Kat asked, sounding very worried and concerned.
"Probably," Nick admitted.
"But in fairness to you, it's a heads up, because aren't you going to be recording [the Bachelor in Paradise reunion] with these people later?" Nick asked.
"I'm so scared of my feelings being hurt," Kat reiterated.
Nick proceeded to reveal that Parisa Shifteh had sent him the DM about a week or so ago and he just wanted to give Kat a chance to defend herself.
"She's going to come for you," Nick warned Kat.
"She is?!" Kat asked.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW"I'm assuming, based on what she wrote me," Nick confessed.
Kat sounded so surprised, voicing how Parisa had been so nice to her in Paradise and she thought Parisa was going to go after Brian Autz at the reunion.
"[Parisa] said, 'Hi, Kat was a bully the entire time in Paradise. Everyone was scared of her, so nobody ever said anything or stood up to her,'" Nick revealed.
Nick also explained to Kat how he had bumped into Zoe McGrady in New York earlier this summer and she had "kind of said the same thing" about her.
"[Parisa] also said, 'I want to speak up about Brian because there were so many things that weren't shown.' But yeah, she just called you a bully," Nick shared.
Kat asked Dale directly if he thought she was a bully, and Dale responded, "No, I don't think you're a bully, but it's not that deep. I think people are going to have opinions."
Kat expressed shock over this DM because she claimed Parisa had come to her for advice about Brian.
"I'm not going to cry, hold on," Kat said, attempting to compose herself.
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"If you want to try to understand everybody's reasoning, you're going to drive yourself crazy, and you're not going to find it," Dale told Kat.
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Kat explained how she saw a lot of herself in Parisa, who was "a little anxious" during her time in Costa Rica. Kat also recalled how she spent a lot of time with Parisa off-camera and that Zoe was briefly her roommate.
"Me and Zoe connected about her childhood, and I was standing up for her against Brian," Kat insisted.
"So hearing the things people have been saying -- it's confusing! It's like what's real or not with friends?"
But Kat revealed how Parisa and Allyshia Gupta -- who was clearly not a fan of Kat and has said unflattering things about her in recent podcast interviews -- were roommates.
"I don't know where they stand today, but like, being called a bully? My intentions are always to help people," Kat explained to Nick.
"If they're going to come to me for things, I am a passionate human being. I am Italian. I speak very intensely and I care very deeply. And maybe that I can understand. I've watched that back and have learned that about myself, that I can be perceived in a certain way."
Kat claimed she didn't even know that Allyshia disliked her until recently.
"We were friends! I was comforting her the night of the Rose Ceremony, and I had been there for Parisa throughout the Brian stuff," Kat claimed.
Neither Dale or Kat could come up with a specific time or incident in which Kat may have acted like a bully.
"Only Parisa can answer that," Dale said, trying to protect Kat.
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Dale recalled, "[Kat] was like, 'I can see where she's coming from with some of the anxiousness here. I've been in her position. I feel for her so much and so deeply.' And so Kat was a fan of Parisa!"
Dale said he wasn't sure what Kat and Parisa's conversations were like one-on-one but he had only heard good things from Kat.
Dale, however, admitted that he and Kat often stayed in their own lane and paid attention to their little world, which prompted Nick to suggest that maybe some of Kat's co-stars didn't receive the attention they wanted.
"I think if you have opinions, sometimes people are going to perceive and take them the wrong way," Dale noted.
Kat lamented, "No one tells me how they're feeling! If I'm making you feel that way, I would love for you to say, 'Hey, you made me feel this way. Let's talk about it,' before just putting a characteristic to me or saying things with so much intensity, so publicly."
"But then it doesn't give them the attention," Dale suggested.
"Yeah, I don't know what their goals are," Kat acknowledged.
"But no one who has said any of the things or the accusations or have spoken on my character have had a conversation with me or gotten to know me to that extent or at least expressed their concerns with me so we can work through it."
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Kat said, in her mind, she's friends with both Parisa and Zoe.
"In your defense, when I read that [DM], I was like, 'Then why didn't [Bachelor in Paradise] show it?'" Nick asked.
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"But if I made her feel bullied -- if that is how I made her feel in any way, I was not aware of that based on how our interactions were," Kat said.
Kat pointed out how she's not always aware of how she makes other people feel.
"I appreciate when someone can just be honest. I don't like, like when I moved to California, people can be nice to your face but feel a certain way. I grew up, like, be as real as possible, but sometimes that can be taken as being a b-tch," Kat explained.
When Kat admitted she's "very direct," Dale added, "Some people can't handle that."
Kat said if she truly made Parisa feel that way, then she'd "love to have a conversation" about it.
"I never want to make anyone feel bullied, so that's just a lot," Kat lamented.
"There have been a few things that have made me, like, 'Man, I don't want to go through life not trusting people!' And girls, for me, I stand with women almost too blindly. It's not even in my bloodstream to stand with a man."
Kat complained about how it's unfortunate to hear something like this in a world where there is already so much unkindness.
"We are already facing enough adversity," Kat said. "We should be supporting each other and uplifting each other and wanting people to see our hearts. And there has just been a lot of not that. And it's hurtful."
When asked if she thinks Zoe, Allyshia and Parisa are two-faced people, Kat replied, "It's just confusing. Again, Zoe and I were roommates and I didn't even know she had a feel for deal. That's how little I learned about people."
Kat said "maybe things settled" and they realized they felt a type of way.
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"If someone makes you feel that way, talk about it. Maybe they felt uncomfortable. Maybe they felt more comfortable sending a DM to someone else or speaking about things on a podcast. I don't know."
Kat shared how her therapist had advised her against finding out the "why" behind other people's behaviors.
"I always want to try to understand, and maybe it's a control thing... But I've learned to just accept because it's going to drive me crazy. I can never really understand where someone is coming from, but yeah, that's a lot," Kat concluded.
"This has been very different from previous seasons."
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
