While viewers can’t resist the charm of The Golden Bachelor’s leading man, Gerry Turner, the same can’t be said for all the contestants on the senior show’s freshman season.
In fact, between the second episode of the series and the fourth, three women voluntarily walked away from their opportunity to win Turner’s heart.
And now there’s been a revelation that another woman almost quit the series amid that mass exit—and she’s a fan favorite.
Last week, Leslie Fhima, the 64-year-old who claims to be woman who prompted Prince to write “Sexy Dancer,” went on an ATV adventure with the 70-year-old widower at the heart of the show. The couple bonded big time, which Turner acknowledged when he handed her an early rose in the hot tub.
But their wild ride came close to being canceled before it began, and the reason for that was a familiar one: Fhima worried her family needed her back home, just like two of the three women who’ve already quit the show.
The first one out
In the second episode, fans learned that Marina Perera was no longer vying for Turner’s heart when she was a no-show among her former fellow competitors. But only those who checked The Golden Bachelor’s social media accounts (or read about it after the fact) learned why.
As a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) revealed, Perera explained her situation to Turner in an un-aired FaceTime exchange.
“The thing I wanted to tell you—you know, I’m a single mom, and I had to choose my family and support my family’s needs at this time,” Perera told him, without getting into any details about the matter. “I am sorry that I had to leave, but at the same time, I had to get my priorities straight. So here I am, and there you are.”
The next woman who headed home, in the very next episode, got a little more specific.
Bye-bye, again
Hot off the heels of a fantastic one-on-one encounter with Turner, Joan Vassos received a text telling her that she was needed back home to help her daughter, who’d just given birth 15 days earlier. She then broke the news to Turner, informing him that she was on her way out of the love-match game.
“I get it. I understand,” he told her with tears in his eyes. “But I can’t tell you how disappointed I am.”
And that scenario almost repeated itself just days later for Fhima, though it was her son who tugged her heartstrings.
“I called my son, and he needed me,” she told E! News.
But while he needed to hear from her, he didn’t want her to drop everything for him.
“Please stay,” she said her son told her. “You have to stay.”
However, had he asked her to come home, she wouldn’t have hesitated.
“With our age comes life,” she added. “And just because your kids are bigger doesn’t mean they don’t have problems. So we’re a mother first, and if my son had said, ‘I need you now, I would have left. Because that’s who I am.”
The other early exit
Of course, if Fhima had quit in last week’s episode, she wouldn’t have been the only one to do so.
The final woman to quit the show (so far) left in that same episode, but she was the first one to do it purely because she wasn’t feeling the love.
“You’re a lot more passionate with other people,” Nancy Hulkower told Turner in a private moment before the rose ceremony. “I think you, in a way, have narrowed it down, but maybe I’m not in that group.”
For his part, Turner accepted her exit theory, replying, “I’m really not going to dispute that.”
Heading into week five, there are just six remaining contestants in Turner’s narrowed-down group.
Read the full article here