Viall, who was the star of Season 21 of ‘The Bachelor,’ tells PEOPLE, “maybe Gerry’s not as golden as we hoped he would be”
Nick Viall knows what it’s like to date on reality TV — and deal with a public end to a romance — but he was still “shocked” by the news that Golden Bachelor couple Theresa Nist and Gerry Turner are getting divorced.
Viall, who was the lead of Season 21 of The Bachelor, chats with PEOPLE at the Gallery Desert House presented by PATRÓN EL ALTO in Indio, Calif., on April 14 about the split announcement last week, and admits he thinks there’s “more to the story.”
“I think what shocked me the most is this wasn’t just a normal breakup or an end of an engagement, this was a divorce announcement,” says the The Viall Files podcast host, 43, “I was caught off guard, and surprised by the abruptness.”
The reality TV veteran — who recorded the upcoming Tuesday, April 16, episode of Viall Files with Tom Schwartz on site at the Gallery Desert House presented by PATRÓN EL ALTO — continues: “It doesn’t require lawyers to get out of an engagement. It does require lawyers to get out of a marriage, and I’m really curious what changed with Gerry and Theresa that made them so sure to sign up a marriage license, but now only to get a divorce.”
Nist and Turner met and fell in love on The Golden Bachelor. They got married in a televised special in January and announced their divorce just three months later.
“I feel like maybe there’s more to the story that we’re not hearing,” he says, adding that he’d welcome Nist, 70, onto his podcast if she ever decides to tell her side of things
“Maybe Gerry’s not as golden as we hoped he would be,” says Viall, noting that he personally thinks Nist’s thoughts on her relationship’s end would be more interesting to hear than 72-year-old Turner’s story.
In a joint interview with Nist announcing the split on Good Morning America on April 12, Turner said, “Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations, and we’ve looked closely at our situation, our living situation and so forth, and we’ve kind of come to the conclusion mutually that it’s probably time for us to dissolve our marriage.”
“We have received so much love and support from so many people who watch the Golden Bachelor and I don’t think we can tell you how many people told us it gave them so much hope,” Nist added. “We want none of that to change for anybody.”
Asked what went wrong in their relationship, the couple noted distance: Nist was based in New Jersey and Turner liked his lake house in Indiana. But Viall doesn’t believe that problems with their living arrangement tells the whole story.
“I don’t think it’s because they couldn’t find an apartment together. They clearly could have, they simply chose not to,” he tells PEOPLE, adding, “Give it a couple months, and then this truth will come out.”
As for the future of the franchise and what Turner and Nist’s split means for the upcoming Golden Bachelorette series, Viall says, “I think we all really enjoyed watching the Golden Bachelor and watching all these people earnestly look for love. And having a TV wedding only to get divorced in three months is not necessarily something that . . . I don’t think helped.”
