The Bachelorette star Jenn Tran and her second runner-up Jonathon Johnson have continued fueling dating rumors with their recent outings together.
Jenn and Jonathon attended People’s 50th birthday party together on Friday.
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The big bash was held at The Chain House in Los Angeles, where Jenn and Jonathon posed on the red carpet together.
Jenn was rocking a sleek black strapless dress and strappy heels while Jonathon sported a white T-shirt with light-wash jeans. Jonathon also wore a black leather belt and shoes to match Jenn’s ensemble.
Jonathon posted a photo from the event on Instagram set to “Already Best Friends” by Jack Harlow, and he wrote in the caption, “The song speaks for itself.”
Jonathon was then spotted in the audience rooting on Jenn for her Dancing with the Stars debut on Tuesday, September 17.
Cameras panned over to Jonathon sitting in the front row alongside Bachelor Nation exes Susie Evans and Justin Glaze. Love Is Blind’s Chloe Veitch was also sitting with them.
The Bachelor and The Bachelorette alums were apparently cheering for Jenn’s The Bachelor ex, Joey Graziadei, as well.
Before Jenn took the stage with her first dance of Season 33, Jonathon stood up and clapped for her.
Jonathon then continued to cheer on The Bachelorette’s Season 21 star throughout her routine with pro partner Sasha Farber.
Since Jenn and Jonathon reunited in California after The Bachelorette finale aired on September 3 — with a nice sushi dinner — and began posting flirty TikTok videos with each other, fans have been shipping them as a couple and gossiping about the nature of their relationship.
On September 7, Jonathon posted a TikTok in which he and Jenn were joking about how she had broken his heart, and he wrote, “All good, I’m not holding a grudge.”
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After sparking the dating rumors earlier this month, Jenn and Jonathon addressed where they both stand in separate podcast appearances.
“We’re on such good terms,” Jenn said on the “Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe” podcast, adding how she wants to remain friends with some of the guys from her The Bachelorette season.
“I’m like, ‘People are going to think I’m weird,’ but no, I just want to be their friend!… Everything worked out the way that it needed to. I have so much love and gratitude for the guys on my season.”
Jenn pointed out how fans will probably see her “grabbing a beer” with not only Jonathon, but her fourth-place The Bachelorette finisher Jeremy Simon as well.
“I want so badly to keep those friendships but nothing more than that,” she noted.
When asked if he’d like to turn his friendship with Jenn into a romance on “The Viall Files,” Jonathon shared, “I’ll tell you this: it’s a hard position to be in when — and I’m not just trauma dumping right now — but when, like, I think people have been in love with the idea of me before and then not actually myself.”
Jonathon noted that getting eliminated from The Bachelorette in third place made him feel like “everyone else can see” his worth “except for the person” he really wanted to see it.
“It’s hard to go back on that… I’m not saying [getting back together] could never happen. I’m not saying that,” Jonathon acknowledged.
Jonathon, however, confirmed he and Jenn have not had a real conversation about the possibility of exploring their relationship again.
“But she’s going to be in L.A. for the next few months [for Dancing with the Stars], and that’s where I live. So at some point, [we will],” Jonathon noted.
Nick advised Jonathon not to tease Bachelor Nation for too long about his relationship with Jenn — if nothing is going to happen, like in the case of The Bachelorette alums Hannah Brown and Tyler Cameron — because people might turn on them.
“What if we don’t know though?” Jonathon asked. “What if we can’t make our minds up?”
The podcast’s host Nick Viall therefore asked Jonathon point blank, “Do you want to try? Do you want to explore it?”
“I don’t know,” Jonathon replied. “Open-minded is probably where I stand… I genuinely have no idea.”
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As for why the pair didn’t work out to begin with, Jenn explained on “Off the Vine” that “it just wasn’t there” with Jonathon.
“I don’t think he’ll mind me saying this, but he just wasn’t sure about doing long distance,” Jenn revealed of the California-based creative director who works in ads and marketing.
“I was like, ‘I live in Miami and I’m not going to be moving,’ and he’s not going to be moving.”
Jenn elaborated, “So we were both kind of just like — we didn’t know if long distance-wise [how it would work]. If his heart wasn’t in it and mine wasn’t, then it wasn’t going to work.”
Jonathon seemed to agree with Jenn’s assessment when he told Nick, “I genuinely think it was just the connection wasn’t there [between us].”
Jonathon finished Jenn’s The Bachelorette season in third place behind winner Devin Strader and runner-up Marcus Shoberg.
Jonathon admitted on the August 29 episode of the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast that he knew he was going home after Fantasy Suite dates.
“I think there was just an X factor missing. Especially watching it back, you can kind of see it. She’s confessing her love for Marcus, and Devin’s saying that he’s in love with her,” Jonathon said.
But Jonathon said he was sitting in “this middle ground” with Jenn in which neither of them had reached that depth with each other.
“We were like, ‘Everything is great, everything is fun, and we have no issues with each other!'” Jonathon recalled.
“There was no drama and it was just free and easy, but that next step was there [and we were behind].”
Jonathon regrettably waited too long to fully open his heart and express his feelings to Jenn, and so he left The Bachelorette’s 21st season after Fantasy Suite dates lamenting about how he had gotten in his own way of finding true love.
Jenn ultimately got engaged to Devin at the Final Rose Ceremony in Hawaii, but she announced on The Bachelorette finale how he had dumped her in a brief early-August phone call that devastated her.
But if Jonathon and Jenn don’t work out, he has an official invitation to look for love on Bachelor in Paradise’s tenth season next year.
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About The Author:
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.