Maria Georgas is teasing a major response after being caught in the cross hairs of Jenn Tran and ex-fiancé Devin Strader’s drama.
“Just got back from a peaceful trip,” Maria, 30, wrote via her Instagram Story on Wednesday, September 4. “This was not something I wanted to come home to but I have some things to say and this time I will not be holding back.”
Maria — who appeared on Joey Graziadei’s season 28 of The Bachelor alongside Jenn earlier this year — was seemingly referring to being brought up during Jenn and Devin’s After the Final Rose conversation during the Tuesday, September 3, finale of The Bachelorette. During the episode, it was revealed that Devin followed Maria on social media just one day he called it quits with Jenn.
“Ending the engagement on a phone call? The next day I wake up to you following girls on Instagram?! And not just any girl, but Maria?!” Jenn said while confronting Devin, causing the audience to audibly gasp. “Not only is that so disrespectful to everything we shared together — I just don’t understand it. It completely invalidated our relationship. Everything we felt for each other. Did that even mean anything to you?”
Jenn also accused him of going “clubbing” with fellow Bachelorette contestant Jeremy Simons instead of properly mourning their breakup, which he facilitated over the phone. Devin, for his part, struggled to find a response before admitting the accusations.
“I can’t excuse the Instagram follow. I know that hurt you. … I failed you and there’s nothing I can say other than that,” he told her, adding that he “had a lot of doubts” after they left the show and was “regretfully late on letting you know.”
Jenn and Devin initially got engaged during the finale, where Jenn flipped the script by proposing first. In the scene, she placed a ring on Devin’s finger after he said yes. Devin then returned the sentiment by getting down on one knee and opened up a box with her ring.
After the Final Rose revealed that following three months together, Devin broke things off with Jenn sometime in July. “He basically said he didn’t love me anymore and didn’t feel the same way,” Jenn recalled to host Jesse Palmer, adding that Devin said he “regretted” the engagement. “He was checked out. It wasn’t what he wanted anymore.”
While Jenn claimed that she fought for their relationship, she claimed Devin had no interest in pursuing couple’s counseling.
“We left Hawaii engaged,” Jenn said through tears. “I thought I found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. As soon as we left Hawaii, things were different.”
Devin’s choice to follow Maria is an even greater dig considering Maria, a fan favorite on Joey’s season, turned down an offer to become the next Bachelorette but backed out after the role was “set in stone.”
“I was offered the role. It was mine until I said it wasn’t,” she confirmed during a May episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “It became very overwhelming to the point where I had to decline.”
While the reality star confessed she had been trying her “hardest to stay silent” about her Bachelorette exit in an effort to support Jenn, she ultimately decided it was best to “be honest” about what went down.
“It was set in stone. I was in it,” Maria claimed at the time. “When everyone around me was so supportive of me being in this position and everyone wanted this for me, I took a second. I’m like, why am I not happy? Why am I not excited about this? It took me realizing that it’s just not my time where I was like, respectfully, I need to decline. I need to take a step back.”
When it was announced that Jenn would be the season 21 lead in March, Maria made her feelings on the choice clear. “Couldn’t be happier ❤️,” she captioned an Instagram Story of the duo at the time.
“When I tell you how happy I am for her you best believe it. We were there for each other. Always,” she captioned a second Story of the two holding hands at a rose ceremony. “I’ll be cheering her on every step of the way. She deserves this moment. And it’s HERS. The representation alone is doing so many little girls proud who can look up and see a beautiful Asian woman bless our screens. You go Jenn!!! Go get your man!!!”
Jenn, meanwhile, later responded to Maria and fellow season 28 contestant Daisy Kent saying they both turned down the role.
“Obviously I didn’t have my phone at the time all of this was going down because we had went right into filming right after it was all announced,” she said during a “Call Her Daddy” episode in June. “Coming back to all of that, yeah, obviously I was really disappointed to see all of that because, I mean, the truth of the matter is, there’s a lot of narratives out there and they’re not necessarily the truth.”
Jenn noted that there have been 21 seasons of the show, with “multiple people” in the running for the gig every iteration.
“Multiple people are being interviewed, or doing meetings about it all, doing fittings or filming intro packages,” she said, “and it’s never really you until it’s you.”
