Desiree Hartsock says 'Bachelorette' fans harassed her 'for years' about her dramatic breakup with Brooks Forester and producers didn't help at all
- Former "Bachelorette" Desiree Hartsock made headlines when Brooks Forester dumped her on the show.
- Hartsock told Insider that she was "definitely not supported" by the show as fans harassed her.
- Fans even claimed Hartsock didn't really love Chris Siegfried, who she married after the finale.
When Desiree Hartsock got engaged on the finale of her season of "The Bachelorette," the wedding-dress designer thought she had finally found her fairytale ending.
But many Bachelor Nation fans paid little attention to her romance with winner Chris Siegfried. They were still talking about her dramatic breakup with finalist Brooks Forester.
Hartsock told Insider she was "definitely not supported" by "Bachelor" producers in the aftermath of the split, which she details in her new book "The Road to Roses."
"I had a very hard time," she said. "People couldn't get over it."
Brooks Forester broke up with Desiree Hartsock just before their fantasy suite date
On a bench overlooking the turquoise sea in Antigua, Forester told Hartsock that he was leaving the show.
"I really want to be madly in love with you," he told her. "I really had to sit down and ask myself, like, do I see this lasting after? I don't feel like the moments apart are hard enough."
"I don't know what to say," Hartsock replied. "I love you, I do."
The devastating scene, which aired in 2013, was easily one of the most dramatic breakups in "Bachelor" history. And fans of the show couldn't stop talking about it.
"The aftermath wasn't pretty," Hartsock writes in her book. "The breakup trended on Twitter and was splashed across the covers of tabloids, which described me in extremely unflattering terms - namely, as the cover of Us Weekly put it, 'humiliated, betrayed, and driven to tears.'"
But the coverage became even worse when, a few episodes later, Hartsock accepted Siegfried's proposal.
"I was accused of being fake," she continued. "And the internet at large declared that he was a rebound."
Hartsock told Insider that she got little support from 'Bachelor' producers amid fans' wrath
"They just move onto the next contestant," she told Insider. "The producers you get to know, they're nice and kind and care about your relationship in the moment. But they have to get back to filming and they'll move onto the next couple."
Hartsock also noted that she was never given any media training to deal with press after her season aired.
"Yeah, definitely not supported," she said. "I think there could be more support."
Hartsock also believes that fans were so critical because her and Brooks' breakup became "the focus" of her season in editing, while her and Siegfried's love story "didn't get as much airtime."
"The producers have to make a show, I don't fault them in the way they edited it," she said. "But it didn't help me at all after the fact. I mean everything you see happened, it's just there was a lot more that happened with Chris and I too."
Hartsock said her and Forester's breakup has followed her, even 8 years later
Hartsock remains happily married to Siegfried, and the couple have two children together. But she said that people continued to question their relationship for years after her season of "The Bachelorette" aired - both online and to her face.
In her book, Hartsock recalls one incident in which she and Siegfried were riding on a "Bachelor" float during a parade at the Rose Bowl and a man pointed and shouted, "She doesn't love you Chris!"
And Hartsock told Insider that the Twitter comments were even worse.
"It's amazing what the keyboard warriors would be typing," she said. "It happened even when we were married."
Representatives for ABC did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.