Colton Underwood's Estranged Ex Cassie Randolph Blindsided By His Coming Out, She Is 'Processing' The News: Source

Bachelor Nation’s Colton Underwood publicly came out as gay in an intimate chat with GMA’s Robin Roberts on Wednesday, April 14. And while many former contestants from the Bachelor franchise rallied around the 29-year-old, his estranged ex, Cassie Randolph, is reportedly having a hard time “processing” the news.  

Randolph was apparently blindsided by Underwood’s news, as “she was not made aware in advance that he was going to be on GMA doing a tell-all,” an insider dished, adding that she “hasn’t really had time to navigate how she feels about it yet.” 

As OK! previously reported, Underwood opened up to Roberts on GMA about his struggles with his sexuality. During the bombshell chat, he told Roberts that he feels “proud” of who he is after a difficult journey coming to terms with being gay — even revealing he had “suicidal thoughts” due to the internal conflict he was going through. 

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The former Bachelor said that he was motivated to come out after getting “into a place with [his] personal life that was dark and bad.” He added: “I think overall the reason why now is because I got to a place where I didn’t think I was ever going to share this. I would have rather died than say, ‘I’m gay.'” 

Underwood has a long, sordid history with Bachelor Nation. He came in fourth on Becca Kufrin's season of The Bachelorette in 2018 and then joined Bachelor in Paradise in 2019 before he got his own season of The Bachelor the same year (where he met Randolph).  

The former NFL player famously jumped over a fence to pursue the blonde beauty and cut the season short to date her after she voluntarily exited the show, but their romance was short-lived as they called it quits in May 2020. 

Things took a dark turn after their split, when Randolph was granted a restraining order against the former athlete in September of last year due to alleged harassment and stalking. Underwood denied the claims, and Randolph ultimately dropped the charges in November.  

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During his chat with Roberts, he explicitly apologized to Randolph for his behavior and how he treated her. “I got into a place with my personal life that was dark and bad, and I can list a bunch of different things, but they’d all be excuses,” he said of their controversial split. “I’d like to say sorry for how things ended. I messed up. I made a lot of bad choices.”  

Underwood added that he was in love with Randolph, which made figuring out his sexuality all the more difficult. “I loved everything about her and it’s hard for me to articulate exactly what my emotions were in going through that relationship with her, because I obviously had an internal fight going on,” he said.  

The Bachelorette alum, who is reportedly filming a new Netflix series (with gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy) about his journey of acceptance, continued: “I would just say that I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. I’m sorry for any pain and emotional stress I caused. I wish that it wouldn’t have happened the way that it did. I wish that I had been courageous enough to fix myself before I broke anybody else.” 

UsWeekly was the first to report on Randolph "processing" the news.