Blake Horstmann found his All Star surprise while filming his latest reality television show on the Canary Islands in Spain.
Horstmann was previously the runner-up on Becca Kufrin’s season of The Bachelorette and leading contender on Season 6 of Bachelor in Paradise. He most recently spent time on the beach filming the new reality show All Star Shore, which labels itself as a “first-of-its-kind party competition.”
The Paramount+ show primarily consists of previous non-scripted series contestants, both American and international, vacationing together and playing party games for large cash prizes.
Horstmann found romance with Gibelli while filming reality show
Even though the former Bachelorette contestant may have had no intention of finding love at the shore, things changed when he met Giannina Gibelli.
Gibelli first gained stardom during her appearance on Season 1 of Netflix’s reality series, Love Is Blind. Although she ended up finding love with Damian Powers during her time on the show, the two officially announced their breakup in August of last year.
When talking about his time on All Star Shore, Horstmann opened up about how surprised he was to fall for Gibelli – especially when finding love wasn’t necessarily the premise of the show.
“Nothing was forced,” he said. “That was one of the coolest things because I’ve been on some other shows where things aren’t necessarily forced but… you’re put in situations where they want a certain result.”
“And for this, it was almost the opposite, it was like, ’Stop, get away from each other. This is a competition show.’ So that was pretty fun and it felt a lot more real and a lot more genuine, so I really enjoyed that,” Horstmann continued. “It was almost like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop at times during the show, but it never did. So it was a nice surprise, she was a nice surprise, and what we built throughout the show was a very nice surprise.”
Horstmann also opened up about how nice it was to not have the same pressure to “find love” that he felt during his time in the Bachelor franchise.
“On The Bachelor and Bachelorette, getting engaged in two or three months or whatever it is, it is an added pressure. It really is,” he stated. “They want to see it, the audience wants to see that. You think you’re ready at the time, but honestly most of the time you’re not. And so that pressure wasn’t here.”
“There wasn’t even pressure to find a girlfriend, so it was very refreshing and it was just so, so different.”
Gibelli didn’t expect to connect with anybody on All Star Shore
When it comes to the Love Is Blind star, Gibelli said she mutually wasn’t expecting to fall for someone while filming the competition show.
“I definitely wasn’t expecting to find someone that I genuinely connected with and that I genuinely wanted to see every day. It was really kinda confusing in the beginning, just cause I went in not expecting anything and then suddenly I have this gorgeous man in front of me,” said Gibelli.
“I think at the end, you’ll feel what we felt which was just a very genuine and very true thing that you’ll have to tune in and watch,” she said.
Page Six confirmed back in January that the two had officially started dating, and the couple debuted their relationship publicly on Instagram in April.
All Star Shore premieres on June 29th on Paramount+.