Entertainment News

Home

Movies

Streaming

Music

Quizzes

Newsletter

Blake Moynes talks Katie Thurston's romance with John Hersey

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Blake Moynes speaks on Katie Thurston's romance with John Hersey: 'I feel stupid and foolish'

By Megan Armstrong | Last updated 11/24/21

The aftermath of Blake Moynes' split from Katie Thurston is turning out to be just as much of a whirlwind as their romance on "The Bachelorette."

Moynes and Thurston announced they were ending their engagement and going their separate ways on Oct. 25, and by Tuesday, word spread quickly that Thurston, 30, is dating 27-year-old bartender John Hersey, whom she originally eliminated from her season of "The Bachelorette" in the second week. (Thurston's season, the 17th overall, aired from June to August.)

On Friday, Moynes broke his silence as a guest on the Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation podcast hosted by Bryan Abasolo and Mike Johnson.

"When you go [from] a complete high of getting engaged and thinking you found your person to two months after the airing of the finale, crashing and going the complete other way," the 30-year-old wildlife conservationist explained. "Emotions have been all over the place, and for the first week, it was a lot of frustration, sadness, kind of feeling embarrassed and foolish in a way."

According to E! News on Tuesday, an unnamed insider relayed that Hersey and Thurston "were mutually in the friend zone for months," but "a lot has changed in the last four weeks." Page Six also cited an unnamed source: "John has been there for her through all the major changes in her life, and they are excited to explore this newly found romantic connection."

Thurston more or less confirmed she is dating Hersey by ending her "12 Days of Messy" series on her Instagram Story, where she compared her ex-flames to Taylor Swift songs, by pairing footage of her and Hersey with Swift's "Begin Again." (Moynes' song was "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," which, yikes.)

Thurston even more explicitly confirmed she's with Hersey with this tweet.

Producing my own happiness pic.twitter.com/EG97siRwrX
— Katie Thurston (@katiethurston) November 23, 2021

Moynes' episode was recorded last week, so Abasolo and Johnson spoke with him again to specifically addressed this new development and added it to the end of the Talking It Out episode:

"I've been speechless for a lot of it. I'm just still trying to process it. Everyone's asking me questions like I have the answers. I don't. I have no idea. When everyone heard this, I heard the exact same thing. There was speculation, I think, obviously, but I really thought there was no way just based on timeline. So, you know, I'd love to be able to provide more insight. I literally just have nothing, and I am trying to ask myself all the questions to try and figure out myself, and I don't know how."

Moynes said he has the hardest time processing the timeline of his breakup with Thurston with the reported timeline of her romantic feelings for Hersey.

"There's '12 Days of Messy' that I didn't sign up for but I was attached to—just like all the other guys," he said. "It started 12 days ago. I'm sure that she probably knew who Day 12 was and who it was gonna be and why, so when I try to think about the breakup happening when it did roughly a month ago, she probably had an idea two weeks after that who was gonna be No. 12 and how she was gonna announce it. So naturally, you start to think about timeline."

Moynes continued: "I knew they spent a lot of time together and stuff, but there's just no way. I never had an inkling. I'm just a very secure guy. Very confident guy, and I give my trust out 100 percent, especially to the person who I should be trusting the most. I really don't think there was any physical cheating there, but there was clearly emotional [cheating] for it to transition as quickly as it did. I feel stupid and foolish for allowing it to happen, I guess, to some degree."

Moynes wondered aloud if any of it was "partially" his fault, positing that maybe Thurston was "emotionally cheating to some degree" because he wasn't able to provide her with words of affirmation.

Before Moynes spoke out on the matter, his mother, Emily Moynes, disapproved on social media of Thurston's behavior.

More must-reads: