Joan Vassos, an early Golden Bachelor front-runner, startled Gerry Turner and fans alike when she abruptly left the ABC reality series in Week 3. However, as Joan revealed in a new interview, a return was once in the works.
Joan has been open about quitting The Golden Bachelor to care for her daughter, who had just given birth and was suffering from postpartum depression when she was shooting. Joan was in the middle of helping her daughter obtain “some mental health care” after coming home to Rockland, Maryland, when the show’s producers called, she told TheWrap.
“They said, ‘Do you want to come back?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to come back; let me see how I’m doing with my daughter,'” Joan revealed this to the site during a Women Tell All taping in late October. Production eventually arranged for her to return to Bachelor Mansion so she could resume her adventure to find love with Gerry.
Joan intended to return to the set “maybe four or five days” after she departed. “And then my daughter wasn’t good again,” she went on to say. “We just hadn’t made it far enough—I hadn’t gotten her a doctor yet; I had called in, but it just couldn’t unfold quick enough…. It wasn’t in the cards.”
Joan’s kid is doing much better since ABC shot The Golden Bachelor in June. “Once a mother, always a mother, I’ll always choose my kids first,” she said on Instagram on October 13. “Thank you for all of your outpouring [of] love and support, for not only me but also my daughter—everyone is now healthy and happy!”
Joan said in the same Instagram statement, “As for me and my journey to love, I guess we’ll have to see where it takes me next.”
Joan’s Bachelor Nation comeback may not be off the table after all. Though ABC has yet to announce a Golden Bachelorette spinoff, Joan previously told Bustle that she would be interested in potentially co-leading the series with bunkmate Sandra Mason.
“I think we’d get along well,” Joan added, adding an early request for the bottom bunk if she returns. (She had earlier offered to sleep on the top bunk due to Sandra’s knee replacement, which made ascending more difficult.) “[There’s] no animosity when something great happens to each other.”