Marina Perera decided to leave the Golden Bachelor to “support” her family despite receiving a rose from Gerry Turner on night 1.
Eagle-eyed fans were quick to notice fan-favorite Marina’s — an educator from Los Angeles — absence during the show’s second episode, which aired on Thursday, October 5. While social media was abuzz with speculation about her whereabouts, the Golden Bachelor shared a deleted scene from the show that explained what went wrong.
“One of the reasons I came by today is Marina,” host Jesse Palmer told Gerry, 72, in a clip shared on the Golden Bachelor’s social media pages following Thursday’s episode. “Marina’s had a situation with her family back home. She’s no longer here now, but she did want the opportunity to speak with you, if that’s OK.”
During a FaceTime conversation between the two, Marina, 60, apologized for abruptly leaving the show.
“The thing I wanted to tell you, you know, I’m a single mom and I had to choose my family and, you know, support my family’s needs at this time,” Marina shared. “I am so sorry that I had to leave, but at the same time I had to get my priorities straight.”
Gerry was receptive to her explanation, telling Marina that he “fully” understood and supported her decision.
“Commitment to family overrides just about everything else,” Gerry said. “I really respect you for doing what you’ve done. I agree with you 100 percent that you needed to put your family needs before everything else.”
Gerry told Marina that she had his “prayers and support” as she dealt with her home situation.
“I really want to wish you well,” Marina concluded. “I think there are some beautiful women with some beautiful souls and I want to wish you nothing but the best from my heart.”
While Gerry did tell host Jesse, 45, that he was “disappointed” with Marina’s departure, there is still a large group of women vying for his heart.
At the rose ceremony during Thursday’s episode, Gerry sent home Natasha, 60, Jeanie, 65 and Peggy, 69.
In the preview for the third episode — set to air on Thursday, October 12 — Gerry declares that it “sucks to be alone.” However, it doesn’t seem like he’ll be lonely for too much longer as the ABC star teased to Us Weekly last month that he did, in fact, develop strong feelings for more than one woman.
“I thought, ‘No, that’s absolutely not possible. That’s silly.’ How wrong I was,” Gerry admitted. “Because through the course of the journey, I really felt strong feelings for several of the women.”
However, there was just one woman who stole his heart.
“In retrospect, I realized that in that particular moment, whenever it was — the setting was such that, ‘Yeah, it was easy to look at someone and tell ’em that you loved ’em.’ But once you get through it all and you look back, then you realize that there is just really one person that really meets the standard in all situations that you want it to be,” he told Us.
The Golden Bachelor airs on ABC Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET.
