Shawn Booth Finally Tells the Truth About His Beef With Nick Viall

Shawn Booth says the Bachelor Nation drama that once powered a season of TV is officially over. On the April 2 episode of Tomi Lahren Is Fearless, he laid out how the rivalry with Nick Viall really went down — real feelings in the moment, turbocharged by TV, and now long dead.

The Nick thing, in plain English

"No, not anymore. We were [beefing]. That was real."

Booth, 38, did not pretend it was all for show. He says the tension with Viall, 45, was absolutely there during filming, but the volume got cranked by the environment — producers, storylines, and a whole lot of voices telling him what to think. Once you step off the set, he added, it gets hard to separate what was genuinely yours from what was fed to you.

What it felt like in 2015

Both Booth and Viall competed on Kaitlyn Bristowe’s season of ABC’s The Bachelorette back in 2015. The season ended with Booth and Bristowe, now 40, engaged. They broke up in 2018.

Booth remembers feeling cast as the hero opposite a made-for-TV villain — and he says that did not happen in a vacuum. According to him, producers kept knocking Viall behind the scenes, and even fans he met while traveling hyped him up as the good guy who needed to swoop in and save the day. In that headspace, Booth says he went full protect-my-girl mode and genuinely believed Viall was not there for the right reasons. Looking back, he calls the whole thing real, but padded with a lot of extra stuffing.

Kaitlyn now

Do Booth and Bristowe keep in touch? Barely. Booth says he has heard from her only a couple of times over the past decade. They both live in Nashville, but he has only bumped into her once since the show.

Life after reality TV

These days, Booth is a personal trainer and runs BC Block Nashville. He also became a dad in December 2023 when he and girlfriend Audrey 'Dre' Joseph welcomed a baby boy. Two years later, in December 2025, they marked his second birthday on Instagram with a very proud-parent post. They call him Locks and basically described him as pure joy with a laugh that could be the dictionary photo for the word. The vibe was: we are already nostalgic for the moment we are in.

Quick timeline

• 2015: Shawn Booth and Nick Viall both appear on Kaitlyn Bristowe’s Bachelorette season; Booth and Bristowe get engaged.
• 2018: Booth and Bristowe split.
• April 2 (podcast): Booth says the feud with Viall is done; it was real at the time but exaggerated by the show.
• December 2023: Booth and Audrey 'Dre' Joseph welcome a son.
• December 2025: The couple celebrates his second birthday on Instagram, referring to him as Locks.