Jake Pavelka Talks Love Right Before Split With Vienna Girardi
On June 18th, I had the pleasure of visiting the Drop Dead Diva set in Peachtree City, Georgia. The second season of filming was underway, and there was a special guest star on the set, Jake Pavelka. Jake was the most recent bachelor on ABC’s The Bachelor and appeared on the most recent season of Dancing With The Stars. He’s been in the news quite heavily lately since he ended his relationship with his fiancee Vienna Girardi, who he had said had been cheating on him.
I sat in on filming that afternoon, and Jake seemed to be quite the natural actor. He told me he didn’t have any more projects lined up after this appearance at the moment, but he was definitely looking.
His role on Diva isn’t that much of a stretch, as he plays a heart-breaker on a similar format show as The Bachelor entitled Final Rose. His character gives a less than compassionate sendoff to one of the finalists who then ends up taking the show to court for portraying her unfairly. But just how realistic is that? How much editing is done on these reality dating shows?
“You know, everybody’s big question is, “How do they edit the show; how do they put it together?” The editors do whatever they’ve got to do to make the audience feel the same way I did when I going through the experience. So, if I had – you know, my heart was smashed, they’re going to edit it so that everybody that’s watching feels my pain. That’s how they edit reality.” Jake explained.
So naturally after quizzing him about his guest appearance, I had to ask him about Vienna. Had a date been set? Jake cleverly routed himself around my question by answering, “We’re moving forward. She was all excited; she found some shoes that she really, really, really liked. I think they were, like, some Jimmy Choos that had sparkles; she is all girl. I keep an eye on them. Just to make sure nobody buys them, I’ve got to get in there and buy her the Jimmy Choos.”
Had I caught him before the phone call with Vienna? Hard to tell. He certainly seemed like a pretty sweet guy, and of course he was quite charming. However, after hearing about the split a couple days later and seeing the People Magazine cover a mere week later, I was a little skeptical as to whether or not I had gotten the full story from Mr. Pavelka.
With that being said, another guest star, Camille Guaty, on Drop Dead Dead said that Jake found out Vienna’s fling just minutes before filming a scene on the series. Which was right around the time I interviewed him. Perhaps he hadn’t had time to process the news yet, or perhaps I did catch him right before he found out the news. One thing is for sure though, he sure seemed to still be in love, telling me at the end of our interview that, “I got damn lucky and found Vienna.”
Well Jake, we certainly wish you the best. You seemed like a good guy, and even if we didn’t get the full story from you – we understand that there was a lot of drama going on there and perhaps it was soon to talk.
Jake Pavelka’s episode of Diva, entitled “Good Grief,” is set to air on August 22. Check back for my full interview with him next month!
Your Pop Cuture Junkie,
Emma Loggins
Great interview Emma!and youre right, his random show comment to the question seemed like an avoidance. I wish they stayed true to reality with those sort of shows, I remember catching the ‘Some eliminations were in accordance to the ideas and agreement of producers’ subline after Top Chef one day and it half ruined it for me if I’d let it! I was wondering if you could open a comment and question box about your life in your bio section or the blog overall, I loved the pics and bio of you yourself!