We didn’t learn much about Charlie Grogan, even though he spent four weeks in front of our faces trying to woo Emily Maynard. Sadly, his most memorable moments were relatively embarrassing ones, but also humanizing, sympathy-inducing ones: First, when he had trouble with his lines on the Muppet date and confided in Emily about his ongoing recovery from his devastating head injury. And this week, in Bermuda, when he cried after his team lost the sailing race. Hey — at least he’s not the only guy who’s cried this season.
But now that months have passed since Emily withheld a rose from him that week in Bermuda, Charlie’s keeping his chin up. Maybe because, as Charlie tells it, he and Emily never had a spark to begin with — even though, and viewers never knew this, they’d met once before. Here are the highlights from Charlie’s conference call with the media today:
On why he thinks that he got eliminated in Bermuda:
I probably could’ve talked to her more about more personal things, because every time we did have conversations, it was never a good time and place to get into those things. I didn’t really know a lot about her background, her stories. […] I never really had that one-on-one intimate-type of opportunity to really share those kinds of stories. It was always more group dates or at a lounge or at a bar. There’s a time and place to share those kinds of feelings, and I didn’t really feel like those were it. I was hoping that maybe I would eventually get that opportunity to get that time, but I never did, and it’s alright.
Why he asked Emily if he could opt out of the comedy segment on the Muppet Date:
To this day, I still go to speech therapy. There are still a lot of things that I have to work on. There’s a lot of words that I can’t still pronounce. If there’s anything more than three or four syllables in it, I have a hard time pronouncing it, so I have to kind of sound it out. So that was difficult.
What made me decide to go and approach her was the fact that me and John “Wolf” were rehearsing what we had written down so far, and I was having a hard time really pronouncing the punch line when it came to the joke. And it was really stressing me out, because I don’t want to be the guy to ruin such an important event for Emily and for Ricki and for the show. So I didn’t want to be that guy to go onstage and kind of bite my tongue and the audience is kind of like, “Who is this guy and what is wrong with him?” Because they didn’t know my story.
Everyone that I’ve been around since my accident has known what happened to me and what I’ve gone through, so we kind of laugh about it when I like stumble on a word or can’t really pronounce something. It’s kind of funny to us now and I’m willing to laugh about it, but I just wasn’t ready because again, to be thrown into a 1200-people audience plus a million on national television, it would be my first time actually talking around a lot of people without — it’s messing up and not being made a fool of — I think that was my insecurity the most there at the end. And then also, I got called onstage for the Miss Piggy thing. I pulled it off, but oof, that was tough.
Where he stands on Chris and Doug’s age/maturity debate this week:
Yeah well, I was actually there in the room when they were having that conversation at the hotel, but I could kind of lean either way. I was on Doug’s side in regards to you have more experience by age, but then again at the same time, I agree with Chris because he’s right. He’s very mature at his age. I know at 25, I was nowhere near close to his maturity level. Again I don’t know him, I’m just basing that onset, which has only been close to a month. But yeah, the argument could go either way. It all depends on your experiences in life and how you take those experiences and how you mature — no matter if you’re 18 or 38.
Who he thinks is the best guy for Emily:
From Day 1, I thought Sean was a great guy. I don’t know what his and Emily’s one-on-one time was like, or what their conversations were like, but from my point of view, I thought Sean was a great guy. If I could pick one, that would be the one, but I’ve got a lot in mind. I mean, Travis is a great guy, Wolf is a great guy. But if I was told to pick one out of the guys left, I think Sean is a pretty good dude.
On who might be on the show for other reasons than to become Emily’s husband:
I get the feeling that there’s a lot of guys there for other things and opportunities that can come out of being on a TV show. You know, for myself, I don’t act, I don’t sing, I don’t dance, I don’t model. So I was going on this for just the experience alone so that when I’m 60, and I talk to my kids or I’m a grandfather, I can be like, “I was on a TV show and it was great. The experience was wonderful.”
But I think there were a lot of guys that were on the show for other intentions. I’m not that guy to name names. At the Men Tell All episode, whenever that airs, I might be a little bit more in position to call them out, but yeah right now, I think it’s a little too early and I don’t want to name names or hurt anyone.
On his impressions of Emily during the show (plus, how they met before!):
It’s so hard to tell because of the cameras and the lights and all the people sitting around. I mean, your comfort zone isn’t really there. I met her way before the show. I met her years and years and years ago here in Nashville with mutual friends. We have mutual friends that live here, and I’d have to say that she acted a lot different than she did while I was on the show. She has to have this persona that she has to keep. I don’t know. At some times, I felt — again, I think there just wasn’t a spark between us — but sometimes I felt the conversations weren’t really flowing. I mean, they were flowing on my end, but on hers, it was kind of like I was talking to the wall. I don’t know. Maybe it was just — I don’t know.
I got cast by a girlfriend of mine that I went to college with online. Actually, when they called me, I thought it was a prank call. I thought it was a bill collector. I didn’t answer for like two or three days. I finally picked [the phone] up and was like, “Who is this? What do you want?” But yeah, she remembered me. She had said the moment I stepped out of the limo — she looked at me and was like, “Damn, I think I know this guy!” And that was really kind of a cute conversation we had together, because she didn’t know how she remembers me, but she had seen me before and this and that. And I was like, “Yeah, you know, we knew each other through mutual friends at a birthday party and we had a good time.” She knew my face. She remembered me.
(Image courtesy of ABC)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
Meghan hails from Walla Walla, WA, the proud home of the world’s best sweet onions and Adam West, the original Batman. An avid grammarian and over-analyzer, you can usually find her thinking too hard about plot devices in favorites like The Office, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and How I Met Your Mother. In her spare time, Meghan enjoys drawing, shopping, trying to be funny (and often failing), and not understanding the whole Twilight thing. She’s got a BA in English and Studio Art from Whitman College, which makes her a professional arguer, daydreamer, and doodler.
