The Truth About Nick Viall's Past

From coming thissss close to winning Andi Dorfman's heart during the tenth season of The Bachelorette, to casually crashing bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe's subsequent season, then adding Bachelor in Paradise to his reality resume, Nick Viall has most definitely left his Midwestern mark on Bachelor nation. At the time of this writing, he's the guy all the ladies are after on Season 21 of The Bachelor, so if you've been watching, you're already well-versed on his tight relationship with his family (he's one of 11 siblings) and his deep love for the Green Bay Packers, but here's everything else you need to know about the man behind the roses.

Long before he battled contestant Josh Murray for Dorfman's affection, a teenage Viall honed his competitive side as captain of the Waukesha North High School cross-country team in Wisconsin, later becoming a record holder at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His high school coach, Jamie Mosley, told MIleSplit.com, "He was a competitor. He wouldn't go out if he wasn't giving his best. He really gave it his all." Sound familiar?

Rewind to life before group dates and fantasy suites: Viall sold software in Chicago, attempted modeling "a little bit" in Los Angeles, then teamed up with a couple partners to launch a small online business for men's grooming products. "I've been focusing a lot of time on that [men's grooming] business," he told Glamour in January 2017. "I've used my business acumen that I've learned in corporate America and the platform that I've been fortunate to gain in the Bachelor world to kind of see if those two can work together."

Unbeknownst to Viall, he was apparently recorded while having a phone conversation on a plane just days after being rejected by bachelorette Dorfman in 2014. Presumably, ABC producers were not pleased about the leaked spoilers (Bachelor nation is lurking everywhere, bro!), but we did learn of his deep affection for Dorfman's family. "Oh, loved 'em. Love, love, loved her family. Great relationship with both her parents," he spilled to whomever was on the other line.

In that same recorded conversation, Viall fails to sugarcoat his opinion of Dorfman's then-love (now former fiancé) Josh Murray. "He just eats, sleeps, and sh*ts and like, has a bad temper. I mean, he's really competitive...he's super emotional, he's really insecure...and he's incredibly set in his ways."

Was this foreshadowing? After her split from fellow Atlanta native Murray, Dorfman painted an eerily similar picture in her tell-all book It's Not Okay: Turning Heartbreak Into Happily Never After: "What [people] didn't know is I was trapped with someone who, in my opinion, often behaved like an emotional abuser," she wrote (via The Huffington Post)...He was good-looking, with an electric smile and the ability to charm anyone, and his affection in public made people believe that he was a loving partner, but by the end of our relationship, it was just a mask covering the control he exerted in private. He had an uncanny way of manipulating situations and conversations to make me feel like the worst person in the world...If I talked to another man, I was a 'whore.' If I disagreed, I was 'argumentative.' If I defied him, I was a 'bitch.'"

Viall has the rare gift—or curse—of forever reliving his relationships through reality TV, and yet he still insists he wouldn't change a thing. No, really. Not even the time he read Dorfman that cheesy love note. When discussing his former forays with bachelorettes Dorman and Bristowe, he told Glamour, "Ultimately they didn't work out because I don't think they were supposed to work out. I don't think it was something that I did wrong. I don't think if I would have done anything different that those relationships then would have worked out."

If you believe the rumor mill, Viall and Jen Saviano's relationship on Bachelor in Paradise failed because, well, he had a better offer from ABC to star as Bachelor no. 21. That's not true, according to Viall. Although he considers Saviano "great and beautiful and smart," he told Glamour their relationship was simply lacking the va-va-voom. "It might sound cliché, but there's just something that was missing. Not to take anything away from Jen, but that spunk or that challenge [was missing]."

Andi...Kaitlyn...Jen...who? Despite once upon a time seemingly falling so in love as the cameras rolled, Viall now has no time for walks with his exes down memory lane. "The women that I dated I felt very fortunate to have them in my life, but as the Bachelor I think I just wanted a clean slate," he told Flare in December 2016. "All the people that I had met in my life were great, but obviously none of them I felt at that time were someone that I wanted to potentially spend the rest of my life with."

Viall's on-camera image has been tainted by some major reality TV twists. First, he dropped a Bachelor bombshell during Dorfman's "After the Final Rose" special when he bluntly asked her about their private between-the-sheets behavior. After audiences collectively picked their jaws up off the floor, Viall floored us once again when he, out of nowhere, strolled into Bristowe's season of The Bachelorette during episode 4. His actions painted him as a shady, limelight-thirsty villian, but, according to Emily Ferguson—one-half of the Bachelor in Paradise twins—Viall's an honest guy at heart. "I know he comes off as a really bad boy, but he's not," she told Glamour. "He wants to get married, he wants to find the right girl, but he doesn't want to settle. I think it just comes across as not being genuine."

To be fair, it was Viall who first let everyone know he'd slept with Dorfman. For her part, the bachelorette clapped back in her book, writing that Viall asked her mid-sex if she would rather "make love or f*ck." Had their hookup been "mind-blowing," Dorfman said she may have overlooked the awkward interruption, but, nope, Viall supposedly failed to impress. Ouch.

Understandably, Viall isn't overjoyed that his sexual encounters have become a source of tabloid and TV gold. He lamented to Glamour, "I'm not in love with [the fact that it's out there], but I also like transparency. The whole thing with Andi/'After the Final Rose' is an event that I've had to answer questions about. I'm over it, and I wish it would go away. But that's the reality. I wasn't expecting the things that happened with Kaitlyn and I to make TV, but it did. I wasn't expecting [former flame] Liz [Sandoz] to show up and that be talked about, but it did." Call us crazy, but you'd think at this point, Viall would understand how this whole reality TV thing works.

"For someone who's gotten a lot of criticism from the beginning of Andi's season as the perceived villain to now being the Bachelor and being considered a 'fan favorite' on Paradise, I'm not that different of a person," Viall told Glamour in 2017. So he wasn't saved by some magical PR fairy godmother? "As a whole, I think I'm the same person. I actually get sensitive about that for whatever reason; I don't like to think that I was this kind of garbage human being three years ago and only because of The Bachelor have I made this transformation." See, he's been the same abs-flashing, hopeless romantic from Wisconsin all along.

According to tabloid reports, Viall, who turned 36 in 2016, could soon be a father and—wait for it—the contestant carrying his baby isn't this season's winner. A source reportedly told Life & Style (via Gossip Cop) that Viall "picks a 'good girl' as the winner at the end of the series, but what she doesn't know is that right now one of the other girls he slept with thinks she's pregnant and that it's his." Don't pop the champagne and tweet congratulations just yet. At the time of this writing, neither Viall, nor anyone else connected with the show, has publicly commented on the rumors, so for now this remains mere goo goo, gah gah gossip.