Bekah Martinez did not receive a rose this week on The Bachelor and will no longer be competing for Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s heart.
Following Monday night’s episode, Martinez appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! for her first post-Bachelor interview. “I’m hanging in there. It was shocking for me as well, I’m picking up the pieces as I go along,” the 22-year-old nanny told host Jimmy Kimmel.
“For one thing, I have been a fan of the show for years … I’ve been telling my family and friends like, ‘Yeah I’m going on The Bachelor one day,’” she said when asked why she signed up for the dating competition instead of using the dating app, Tinder.
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While Martinez was a memorable contestant this season due to her young age, outside of the show she made headlines recently after she was reported missing on Nov. 18, 2017, by her mother who had last spoken to her on Nov. 12. Her mother said Martinez told her that she was going off to work on a marijuana farm and would see her in roughly a week’s time.
“First of all, a lot of people thought I lied to my mother saying that I was on a farm when I was actually on The Bachelor but no I had already been eliminated from the show,” she told Kimmel.
“I just decided to go to the mountains with my friends for a couple weeks and I was there for six or seven days without phone service which I thought I was going to have phone service and I told my mother that I would,” Martinez recalled.
She continued: “I just had this weird feeling like on the sixth or seventh day, I need to go home now. So I got in my car, drove to where I had service, called my parents and then come to find out only 12 hours before my mother had called the Humboldt Sheriff’s Department saying that I was missing.”
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“To set the record straight I’m not a weed farmer. I’m still a nanny in L.A.,” Martinez clarified to Kimmel.
Local police attempted to contact Martinez and her close friends but never received any response. (While shooting most reality shows, participants aren’t allowed to use cellphones or have contact with the outside world unless absolutely necessary. Any dire news or information is passed along to the participants via the show’s producers.)
In December, a deputy with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office contacted Martinez’s mother to see if the two had spoken, and she confirmed that she had, and her daughter said she was heading home. In order to remove Martinez from the missing persons list, police procedure dictates that authorities speak directly to the missing person.
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Martinez previously addressed the news of her being “missing” on Feb. 2. She tweeted, “MOM. how many times do I have to tell you I don’t get cell service on The Bachelor??”
Watch Martinez talk to Kimmel in the video above.
—With files from Chris Jancelewicz