This rose has some thorns.
Former host of the “Bachelor” franchises Chris Harrison set the record straight after Cheryl Burke appeared on Monday’s episode of “The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever With Chris Harrison” and revealed that a producer for “The Bachelorette” told her that Harrison had blocked her from being forged because the show’s lead.
“I heard you blocked that,” the previous “Dancing With the Stars” pro, 39, told Harrison. “Did you not?”
“No. They put that on me,” he replied. “Yeah, like I even have that much power, like I even have the ability to choose who the Bachelor [or] Bachelorette is.”
The Post reached out to ABC for comment.
Burke, who quit drinking in 2018 and has remained sober since, said that the producers of the show told her that she “didn’t get to do ‘The Bachelorette’ because Chris Harrison said that ‘you’re a sloppy drunk.’”
“That’s so funny,” Harrison, 52, chided before revealing that the show’s executives “would never give me that sort of power.”
“They, in public, would never give me that sort of power to choose who the Bachelor [or] Bachelorette is,” Harrison stated. “I mean, Jack Hobbs Mike [Fleiss] would ask me or … any individual would ask like, ‘Hey, like, what do you concentrate on Emily Maynard? What do you concentrate on Jason Mesnick?’ or whatever. And I give my two cents.”
Prior to her marriage in 2019, Burke had expressed an interesting within the rose-giving show.
“My dating record hasn’t been great the past couple of years so if I even have a probability to go on I’ll,” Burke told People in 2012. “I’m getting old, you recognize, so it’s something of interest to me.”
“It could be fun to have a pool of fellows around you and attending to know someone,” Burke continued. “I believe if I had people setting me up with different guys, I believe it might be easier for me to fulfill someone so far.”
Burke never made it to the show, nor any of the spinoffs, as she wed Matthew Lawrence in 2019. She filed for divorce three years later.
Harrison also had a falling out with the beloved ABC show in February 2021 after defending Season 25 “Bachelor” winner Rachael Kirkconnell when it was revealed that she had attended an antebellum-themed wedding a yr before the show’s taping. He officially left the franchise that June.
On his podcast’s first few episodes, Harrison said that he and his fiancée, Lauren Zima, had been stalked by the paparazzi around that point.
“There have been people parked outside of my house for weeks, following me all over the place we went,” the daddy of two said. “I’d sneak down the hill of my house through my neighbor’s backyard and my buddy would pick me up.”