Colton Underwood revealed if he’s on speaking terms with ex Cassie Randolph after she filed a restraining order against him.
“I have no contact. If she ever did reach out or want to reach out, I would be open to answering any questions that her or her family would have for me,” Underwood, 34, told Vanity Fair in an interview published Thursday, February 26. “That is something I’ve always offered. I’m in no position to really say much more than that or reach out. There’s been no part of me that would. I would always be up for it. It’s all on her terms.”
Underwood was thrust into the spotlight when he joined Becca Kufrin’s season 14 of The Bachelorette in 2018. He later appeared on season 5 of Bachelor in Paradise before becoming the season 23 Bachelor in 2019.
The reality star ended the show dating Randolph, 30, but the pair called it quits one year later. Us Weekly confirmed in September 2020 that Randolph was granted a restraining order against Underwood after she claimed he was stalking and harassing her. The case was dropped in November 2020, and Underwood came out as gay the following year.
While speaking with Vanity Fair, Underwood shared more insight into his state of mind after the pair’s breakup.
“It was 2020. It was, as people remember, COVID. I was fully convinced that she was gonna be my last straight … like, I was going to have to either kill myself or come out. That’s just transparently, like, where my mindset was,” he elaborated. “I don’t know if this is the right phrase, but it was somewhat of the perfect storm of me hitting rock bottom, of me really trying to navigate, ‘Am I gonna kill myself or am I gonna come out?’ That’s just where I was at.”
Underwood is now married to husband Jordan C. Brown, with whom he shares 17–month-old son Bishop. Randolph, meanwhile, tied the knot with Brighton Reinhardt last year.
“I will always own the mistakes that I made. I will always feel guilt and feel this extreme sadness for how I showed up for certain friends, for people in my life. Also fans — letting people down,” the former Bachelor continued on Thursday. “At that point, people had been sort of invested in me and in my story. So I did feel like not only I let myself down, I let a lot of people down there.”
While reflecting on his life before coming out — including claims that he was blackmailed about his sexuality — Underwood said he was “struggling with Xanax and prescription medications” at the time.
“It was a pretty intense moment in my life where I made some really, really poor decisions. The difficult part now is seeing the people who have a lot to say about what happened six years ago,” he noted. “It’s lacking a lot of the context of where our world was at, but also where I was at, the state of mind that I was in.”
Underwood continued: “The pressures and the threats that I was going through. I will always take accountability. I will always own mistakes that I made. But everything that you’re seeing on social media — these videos, these people who have a lot to say — is not correct.”
From playing football to joining Bachelor Nation, Colton Underwood has shared all aspects of his life with fans over the years. Underwood followed in his father’s footsteps by playing college football at Illinois State University. Between 2014 and 2016, he was briefly signed to the San Diego Chargers, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Oakland Raiders. […]
The TV star’s personal life became a topic of conversation again after he joined the cast of Traitors season 4. Underwood quickly received backlash from viewers over his drama with Randolph.
“I met with production. I met with Peacock. I was like, ‘I’m down to do this.’ Because this show is about strategy. It is about the game. It is about traitors. It is not personal,” he explained to Vanity Fair. “My only ask is, like, if I do this, I don’t want people to bring up anything outside of the game. I have a family now, right? I’m … so far past what happened six years ago.”
Underwood ultimately acknowledged the saga during the season 4 reunion, which aired on Thursday.
“I think what I can understand from people viewing me back on television, if you didn’t follow my story and what I went through, and you watched me as The Bachelor in 2019, and then, all of a sudden, you’re tuning in in 2026,” he shared. “I had an incredibly difficult couple of years, and I’ve grown, I’ve changed. I’ve put in so much work into myself and to my family. I never really thought the way that I would show up and play Traitors would be linked to one of the darkest and most horrible moments of my life.”
He concluded: “There’s a part of me I could see why people are talking about it, but it is also for me, a challenging thing to go through, because it was, like I said, I was not in a great place.”
