Sam Frost lifts the lid on The Bachelor: ‘I was insane’

Sam Frost has opened up about her rise to fame after appearing on The Bachelor, and the pressure that came with it.

Sam Frost has no regrets for her reality TV start, yet admits she was “naive” and “young” when she appeared on The Bachelor more than a decade again.

The show catapulted the now 35-year-old to national fame and with that came all of the pressure and intense scrutiny of her personal life.

“Poor, naive Sam,” Frost recalled on the season three launch episode of the Mental As Anyone podcast with journalist Jonathon Moran.

“I was so young and now I often think … what was I thinking? I think about that all the time in terms of things that I said, things that I did, honestly I don’t know what was going through my brain. At the time, I had very pure intentions of being so excited to have the possibility to date the most eligible man in Australia and I was so excited for that.”

That was in 2014, the second season of The Bachelor Australia that saw Frost win Blake Garvey’s heart.

Blake Garvey proposes to Sam Frost on season two of The Bachelor.

The pair subsequently called it quits days after the finale aired and Garvey began dating runner-up Louise Pillidge.

“I always thought, if I was put in front of an amazing guy, I could win him over,” Frost, who worked in finance before the show, laughed of her naivety at the time.

“I was pretty confident with that. You take me out of my small town to suddenly I am not as confident and I am very vulnerable and naive. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Frost is now a mum to son Ted with partner Jordie Hansen, of Survivor fame, with her second child due over the coming weeks.

She explained her naivety at the time, while noting reality dating shows like Married At First Sight have made the format more salacious.

“It wasn’t what it is now and so I think I am glad that I had that experience at that time because I don’t think producers have genuine intentions anymore,” she explained.

Bachelor Blake Garvey's group of Bachelorettes. Photo: Supplied by Channel 10.

“I felt like they did at the time, and I still think that, I tell myself that anyway.

“You’ve got to be entertaining and people have to watch it but I think there is an element of it that I think at the time they were wanting a genuine love story and then they realised I think after our season when it blew up and it all went to hell, they went, ‘oh actually, this gets better ratings, this is more interesting’. So then I think they kind of started messing with the program.”

With the relationship with Garvey ending, producers convinced Frost to sign up as the star of the first season of The Bachelorette Australia, in which she chose now ex Sasha Mielczarek.

“I am insane,” she joked.

Bachelorette final three with Sam Frost L-R Richie Strahan, Sam Frost, Sasha Mielczarek, Michael Turnbull

But there are no regrets. Reality TV led to jobs on radio, and a long stint on TV soap Home and Away.

“How can I? I wouldn’t have been able to have the career that I’ve had, had I not had that experience,” she said.

“So I regret things I’ve said, I regret things I’ve done but I can’t regret doing something like that because then I would have never had the job on radio and I never would have got the job on Home and Away, everything that I’ve achieved in my career is because I did The Bachelor and Bachelorette so I have to be grateful for that.”

* A new episode of Mental As Anyone drops each Tuesday morning.

Originally published as Sam Frost lifts the lid on The Bachelor: ‘I was insane’