Reality TV
Gerry Teased What Happens During His Golden Bachelor Fantasy Suites
They were about more than just “knockin’ boots.”
Ahead of Gerry Turner’s Fantasy Suites week, The Golden Bachelor producers teased what viewers can expect. “You will hear the term ‘knockin’ boots’ more than once, which is so odd and weird,” EP Jason Ehrlich told The Hollywood Reporter, adding that Gerry and his final two women “really used the Fantasy Suites” to get to know each other better.
Gerry also responded to the comment on the Tamron Hall show. “Maybe [knocking boots is] a Texas euphemism for intimacy,” the 72-year-old Indiana grandfather said. “But the misdirect is that that really wasn’t what those Fantasy Suites were for.”
Instead, Gerry said, “I found the Fantasy Suites to be the perfect moment to connect intellectually and emotionally with these women, where I could have conversations that weren’t basically in front of our grandchildren. Because when you’re on camera and mic’d, everything is in front of your grandkids.”
Triple “L” Words
Heading into Hometowns, Gerry had already narrowed down his field of Bachelorettes to three women: Leslie Fhima, Theresa Nist, and Faith Martin. Whether or not there’s any love-making in the Fantasy Suites episode, which ABC will air on Nov. 16, he has used the “L” word with his finalists. Even so, Gerry confessed to Hall that he’s “not sure” about the difference between falling in love and being in love.
“I will say this: Those three women, I was in love with or I love them, however you want to say it,” he said. “They were unique, genuine women. And by the end of my journey, I realized, of course, that only one of them was the woman I can’t live without.”
A More Mature Fantasy Suite
Before ABC’s inaugural Golden Bachelor outing kicked off in late September, Gerry predicted that his Fantasy Suite dates “may look quite different” given his age. “The activities could be quite different than for someone in their 20s and 30s,” he told Entertainment Tonight, adding that the prospect of overnights didn’t make him nervous.
“They make my daughters a lot more nervous than me,” Gerry joked, referencing his two children, Angie and Jenny, with his late wife, Toni. (He’s also grandfather to two girls, Charlee and Payton.)
Either way, he assured ET that he understood the gravity of the situation. “When you’re down to the last two people over that amount of time and that much investment, you really have strong feelings for them even though you know they’re not the right person,” Gerry said of his finale outcome. “They are so close to it. You’re connected so deeply and then you realize they have to leave. It’s, oh my God, it was an incredibly bad situation.”
That’s not to say he didn’t find a happy ending, though. Soon after production wrapped, Gerry dropped a major clue, telling Entertainment Weekly that he was “so pleasantly surprised by how things ended.”
