Chris Bukowski claims his 'Bachelorette' visit was staged

Arguably the most exciting part of Andi Dorfman’s Bachelorette premiere was the moment when former contestant Chris Bukowski showed up, intending to crash the party and steal her heart forever and ever. Sadly, his grand gesture eventually fell flat when Andi asked Chris Harrison to send Bukowski away. But now, we’re learning that the excitement might have been staged.

Bukowski reportedly told TMZ that the whole thing was set up by ABC. “They made it seem like they didn’t know I was coming, but they knew,” he said. According to Bukowski, he’d wanted to join Andi’s season as a contestant but missed the deadline to apply. As a result, the show’s producers came up with the party-crashing plan. Even the roses were their idea, Bukowski said.

So let’s talk believability: Is it possible that Bukowski’s appearance was staged? Of course it is. Let’s face it: Andi’s season opener was not all that exciting, so it’s totally plausible that his drop-in was stuck in to liven up the show a little bit. Then again, do we want to believe Chris Bukowski? That’s another question entirely.

In fact, just to complicate things further, Chris Harrison swore in his weekly blog for EW that the event had not been staged:

“I’m really interested to hear everybody’s thoughts on Chris Bukowski and his surprise visit. I know some will think that we were in on it, but we really weren’t. It was a grand gesture by him to show up like that and I hated being the one to look him in the eye and tell him it wasn’t going to happen. At first I wasn’t sure if he was sincere or not, but after talking to him I could tell he was really wanting to just meet this woman. I appreciated his passion but I had to respect Andi’s decision not to let him up to the house. Part of me was secretly hoping he would make a run for it and try to get into the house — that wouldn’t have ended well, but it would have made for an interesting night. At the end of the day, I was glad he decided to exit quietly and without incident.”

So, which Chris do you believe?