The Bachelorette star JoJo Fletcher admits she knew who contestant Jordan Rodgers was before officially meeting him on the series.
But that has nothing to do with how anything played out (see The Bachelorette spoilers for some very interesting scoop), she swears.
ET talked to the Season 12 star, who acknowledged that she knew the 27-year-old former NFL player was one of her suitors in 2016.
As viewers saw Monday, Jordan Rodgers, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers" younger brother, became an early favorite.
"A week before this whole thing started I think his name got leaked, and it was kind of all over the Internet," Fletcher told the network.
"So, you know, it"s like "Jordan Rodgers, brother of Aaron" … so that"s what I knew going into it. Before I met him … I knew just that tidbit."
"Nothing else, and I don"t think it made a difference either way. I don"t follow football closely, so it"s not like it made a huge difference."
"But I definitely knew that about him going into it."
She adamantly denies reports that she and Jordan Rodgers already knew each other or had even communicated prior to The Bachelorette.
"There"s zero truth to that," she stresses. "The only thing that I knew about him was that he was potentially going to be part of the cast."
"So, I don"t know where people are coming up with these things. That first night was the first night I"ve ever seen him in my life."
"[We had] no conversation, even on the Internet."
Fletcher mused on Rodgers" "first impression" and the subsequent rose by that name that she gave him during the premiere episode:
"Sometimes when you"re with somebody, you automatically have that sense of comfort and peace … the conversation flowed, he"s obviously cute."
"It was an easy conversation on a very stressful night."
As for controversy of Jordan"s romantic history – he was put on blast Brittany Farrar after the show – that topic has not been addressed.
By Jordan or JoJo, at least. It"s the talk of the web right now, and from what we"re hearing about that season, we haven"t heard the last of it.
