See the Exact DM Blake Moynes Sent to Katie Thurston Before The Bachelorette

Blake Moynes joined Katie Thurston’s season of The Bachelorette late, but he already had a head start in her DMs. Here’s what he said.

Watch: “Bachelorette”: Blake Moynes Talks Dating Both Clare & Tayshia

Blake Moynes spilled all the dirty secrets on his pre-show conversations with The Bachelorette‘s Katie Thurston.

The 29-year-old contestant, who competed on Clare Crawley and Tayshia Adams‘ season in 2020, came clean about the content of his social media exchanges with Katie ahead of the show.

“It was right after her first episode, it was right away,” Blake said about reaching out to Katie during Matt James‘ season of The Bachelor on the Click Bait podcast. “This is where people, I think, can take what I’m about to say one way or another.”

“She came out of that limo with that vibrator, I was like, ‘Yeah, I like what she’s about,'” he confessed, describing what prompted him to DM her. “It’s not about the fact that she had a f–king vibrator.”

The reality show contestant continued, “It’s the fact that she had the balls to have fun with it, and go with it, and go with the flow.”

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The Bachelorette 2021: Meet the Men Competing for Katie Thurston’s Heart

Blake was attracted to Katie’s confidence and felt like they had similar vibes.

“It was a simple reach out,” he said, recalling his first message to Katie. “It was like, ‘I f–king love that you did that. That was f–king awesome, like, good for you,’ this and that.”

ABC/Andrew Eccles; ABC/Craig Sjodin

He denied that his first message asserted any statement of being “super into” Katie.

“When I actually reached out that first time, after the first episode, her responses were very cold back,” he revealed. “She was nice, but she didn’t open up her dialogue in any way. It was shut down right then and there.”

He said he “left” things “alone,” but started thinking more and more about pursuing her on the show once there were rumors Katie was the next lead.

 “‘What if I just f–king do this and show up,'” he recalled thinking to himself, despite not loving his initial experience on the show. 

After hearing that ABC officially announced Katie as the bachelorette, he decided to give it a try and go on The Bachelorette again. Viewers saw Blake show up on the June 28 episode, and it was clear that he had an instant connection with Katie.

The Bachelorette's Katie Thurston Discovers Secret Envelope During Her Date in New Clip

As seen in E! News' exclusive The Bachelorette promo for the upcoming episode, Katie Thurston opens a secret envelope in the middle of her one-on-one date.

Katie Thurston puts pressure on one of her suitors after opening a surprise envelope during the upcoming episode of The Bachelorette. 

As seen in E! News’ exclusive promo for the episode that airs on Monday, July 5, the Bachelorette goes on a one-on-one date with Andrew Spencer. Andrew has become a fan favorite after defending Katie’s ability to make her own decisions in light of the Thomas drama on the most recent episode.

In the clip, the standout from Matt James‘ season of The Bachelor surprises Andrew by plugging in a string of lights that reveal a number of secret envelopes hanging just out of reach from the tree branches. She then reads from a note informing the couple that each envelope “contains something that will bring you closer together.”

After getting a boost from the football player to grab the first message, she shares its message aloud. “Would you rather tell the truth and hurt your partner, or lie and not hurt your partner?” Katie asks while reading from the card. 

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Bachelor & Bachelorette Status Check: Find Out Who’s Still Together!

Andrew instantly responds that he’d rather tell the truth, which leads Katie to put him in a situation that might cause him to doubt his decision. “Does this make me look fat?” she asks, and he follows up with, “No! Shut up!” 

ABC/Craig Sjodin

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The athlete then tells the camera during a confessional, “Her personality is so infectious—her smile, her touch is driving me a little crazy right now.”

Check out the above video to see the sexy way that Andrew assists Katie in reaching the envelope. 

The Bachelorette airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

Bachelorette Katie Thurston Defends Letting Blake Moynes Crash Her Season After They Flirted in the DMs

Katie Thurston surprised The Bachelorette viewers by not only having chatted pre-show with Bachelor Nation's Blake Moynes, but then allowing him to compete for her roses.

Watch: Nick Viall’s Warning to “Bachelorette” Katie Thurston

The latest episode of The Bachelorette introduced a new contestant who is a familiar face for Bachelor Nation—and, surprisingly, this isn’t the first time Katie Thurston has interacted with him, either. 

Most of the drama throughout the Monday, June 28 episode focused on lingering tension involving Thomas, especially with Tre telling Katie that the unpopular contestant admitted he wanted to be the Bachelor. Thomas appeared to have talked Katie into keeping him on the show, but she ultimately cut him in dramatic fashion when she called his name at the rose ceremony before chastising him as “selfish, unkind and a liar,” and then letting him go. Ouch. 

Amid all that, she also learned that a guy from Tayshia Adams‘ past was interested in joining the season midway through, and viewers eventually found out it was Blake Moynes. As fans recall, he competed for both Tayshia and Clare Crawley‘s affections last year on The Bachelorette, ultimately making it to Tayshia’s final eight guys.

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We Did a Deep-Dive Into All of Katie Thurston’s Bachelorette Suitors

When he finally surprised Katie by showing up, he apologized for throwing a “wrench” into her plans but explained he “knew this was the only way” he’d get to meet her.

“I’ve been pretty vocal, I think, from the beginning, as soon as you stepped out of that limo, about what I thought about you,” Blake told her, referencing her time on Matt James‘ season of The Bachelor. “You intrigued me, and you continued to, all through everything that you did on that season. Your openness, you’re bold, you’re confident, but you have this playfulness to you, and a humor that I can really relate to, for sure.”

ABC/Andrew Eccles/Craig Sjodin/ABC via Getty Images

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Katie confirmed during her confessional that there was a preexisting connection between the two of them, which is reminiscent of Blake also having sent DMs to Clare before he began filming her season. Additionally, Katie expressed she was having trouble figuring out what to do, given that she knew the other guys would be unhappy to see Blake show up, not to mention this would be the third Bachelorette who Blake has wooed. 

“I’m, like, so flustered right now,” Katie told the camera. “I, obviously, have seen Blake on Tayshia’s season. In fact, Blake and I have talked through the DMs. Blake reached out to commend me for my bold personality. And, I mean, he’s a very handsome guy.” 

Ultimately, she told Blake she would let him know at a later time whether he’d be allowed to participate in the season. But after disposing of Thomas, the star told the camera about Blake, “My gut’s telling me, ‘Explore this,’ and I have to follow my heart.”

After surprising Blake at his room, Katie told him, “For me, I have to really follow my gut and everything, and given where things are at and how I’m feeling, if you wanna stay, I’d like you to join and see if this becomes something.” 

Blake, of course, was delighted, and he learned he would be moving into the house the following day. Based on previews for next week’s episode, Blake is not going to be a welcome presence among the other guys. 

For her part, Katie has yet to post about Blake on social media since the episode aired on the East Coast. However, Blake shared plenty of his own thoughts to Twitter as the action played out.

ABC/Craig Sjodin

“F–k I feel pressure,” he tweeted just after the start of the episode. Ivan Hall, a fellow standout from Tayshia’s season, replied, “Built for this [flexing emoji],” leading Blake to respond with a fist-bump emoji.

As to be expected, viewers posted plenty of quips to social media about Blake returning to the show. One fan tweeted, “So Blake has been ready to marry 3 women since the start of the pandemic and I haven’t even committed to going back to the office yet.”

Another individual posted, “When the guys think Thomas is their problem and then Blake Moynes walks in,” adding a meme of a confused child. 

The Bachelorette airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC. 

How Megababe's Katie Sturino Built a Career Tackling Boob Sweat and Practicing SelfLove

After she accepted her body, Katie Sturino thrived—and now, she's showing us how to do the same. The Megababe founder broke down her journey to success in an exclusive interview with E! News.

Katie Sturino; E! Illustration

Welcome to E!’s Tales From the Top, our series on women who are leaders in their fields and masters of their craft. Spanning industries and experiences, these powerhouse women answer all the questions you’ve ever had about how they got to where they are today—and what they overcame to get there. Read along as they bring their resumés to life. 

Not too long ago, thigh chafe was an embarrassing affliction sufferers felt compelled to hide. Then came Katie Sturino. 

But before she became the purveyor of adorably packaged products aimed at handling our many bodily afflictions (we’re talking thigh chafe, buttne, any manner of B.O.), she was learning the tools of the marketing trade.

Formerly the founder of her own PR agency, the Wisconsin native spent her earlier years in the business promoting others—on two legs (mostly working with fashion brands) and four. Yes, you may recognize her as the proud dogager of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Toast, a puppy mill rescue Katie adopted and turned into a star (Toast’s wedding was, after all, on The Real Housewives of New York City). And as the dog’s fandom grew, so did Katie’s. 

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“@toastmeetsworld changed my life,” she proclaimed in an Instagram post after Toast’s death in December 2017. “Not in a ‘Who Rescued Who Way’, but in a real life altering way.”

As a self-proclaimed “shy person,” Katie continued, Toast “provided me a way to showcase my creativity without putting myself on display. I was able to help dogs and live out my crazy dog fantasies. But when Toast was invited to do a shoot with the @manrepeller I met Amelia Diamond. And she asked to do a style profile on me.”

The experience and response it garnered was shocking. But in a good way. “I just didn’t realize that other people in the world had my thighs and body,” she admitted to E! News in an exclusive interview, “because working at fashion PR for 10 years, you just get kind of conditioned to think that you’re 10 times bigger than everyone you see because that is the case.”

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But outside the narrow measurements of the designer fashion world where she got her start, Katie found a very interested audience, receiving enough positive response from her profile to make the leap to fashion writing with her blog The 12ish Style. “When I read people who were like, ‘I like your shorts,’ ‘I like your jacket,’ ‘Where did you get that?’ I was like, ‘Woah, I can help these women shop,'” she recalled, “and I really realized also that my body was not so strange and that it was just that I had been working in this hyper-specific environment and it was time to stop feeling that way.”

When sizes above a 10 are still often relegated to the back of stores—if at all—Katie’s content has served as an increasingly louder microphone for those the fashion industry has long ignored. Take her #SuperSizeTheLook series, in which she replicates celebrity ensembles on herself. “What I realized is that people were inspired by a lot of other women’s style, but they felt that they themselves couldn’t pull it off,” she explained, “so all I was trying to do is show that this size 0 woman looks great in this outfit, and also this size 14/16 woman can also look great in the same style and so can you, whatever size you are.”

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Scrolling her Instagram, it’s hard not to also notice the pictures of Katie struggling to put on new clothes that, in one way or another, just don’t fit—a scenario anyone watching has likely endured at least once in their life. What spurred her to take a situation that can often be frustrating, embarrassing or downright painful and share it with the entire Internet? Katie decided the blame was misplaced.

“I had put on some weight and I did this big order from a store and nothing was even close to fitting me,” she recalled of the turning point. “I was like, you know what, this is absurd. I’m a New York City-based fashion blogger person, and I can’t even find something to wear in this very large order from a very expensive retailer. I guess I just decided to take the shame out of my head and just put it on the clothing makers because I was the average size of a woman in this country.”

Those posts make up her ongoing series #MakeMySize, where she unabashedly calls on brands to expand their size ranges while using herself as living proof that there are customers not being served. “I don’t call brands out, I call brands in,” she clarified. “I invite you into a dialogue, I don’t put you on blast, I’m not like ‘Boycott this brand.’ It’s never like that.” 

Still, her stance remains crystal clear. As she declared to E! News, “Brands that don’t have a size for the average-sized woman in this country still don’t make sense to me.” So as more retailers start to listen and play catch-up, listen to Katie: “When you’re in a fitting room, and you can’t get the jeans above your knees, and those are the biggest size they make, that’s not really your problem.”

An actual problem in need of a solution, though, was the aforementioned thigh chafe. You know, when your inner thighs rub together and the friction causes that burning, chapped skin that makes it quite miserable to keep moving? Before she tackled it as the first product of her body care brand, Megababe, Katie had already been talking about it on her platforms as early as 2015.

“Essentially, every spring on my own feed I would be like, ‘Ok, it’s chafe season—what are we going to try?’ And I would test all the products and talk about what works, what doesn’t,” she recalled. “I was waiting for the cool new product to come out and they just kept getting lamer and more embarrassing, and I was like…I guess I’ll do this.”

Born was her award-winning Thigh Rescue stick, the start of what has blossomed into an entire collection of products. Fitting the overarching theme of her career, Katie helped sufferers feel seen—and unashamed. Now that she’s created solutions to some of our physical problems, Katie’s here to tackle the emotional ones. Anything you’ve dealt with, she’s probably already hurdled and she’s picked up some lessons along the way. Go on, get inspired:

On why some brands still haven’t expanded their sizing, according to Katie: 

“I would say that when you get down to it, a lot of fashion houses or fashion corporate offices or fashion directors are still pretty fatphobic and they’re happy to call a 12 plus size. They think a 14 is, like, I guess this is the biggest we can go. They don’t want bigger people in their clothes. And I think that that is just a fact. And if you’re not going to expand your sizes, ok, that’s fine, but it is informing people that you don’t care about a certain part of the population and the part of the population that you don’t care about is, like, an average-sized woman in this country.”

On the moment she realized their product was a hit:

“We bought 10,000 units, which was a minimum. We had them in my parent’s garage and my parents were handling fulfillment,” she recalled. “We launched in June and my sister and I were like, ‘We are going to have to get these out of mom and dad’s garage in two years, and laugh about how we started this weird company that no one wanted.’ Even my parents were like, ‘Does anyone need this product?’…Everyone said this was a bad idea, but I was like, ‘I know from my followers and I know from me that this is a product people need.’ And when we sold out in June, I knew that we had something.”

On what people don’t see that is essential to the company’s success: 

“We are really scrappy,” she said of her and the Megababe team, which includes sister Jenny. “I think people think that when you are the founder of a company, then you’re not going to be calling a retailer and setting aside a deodorant for someone, but that’s exactly the type of stuff that all of us do. It’s like, everything from the massive orders to the smallest thing, the smallest one-on-one customer moment.” 

On one of her biggest money mistakes in the business:

“Our second summer, I made us do these wheatpastings all over the city,” she recalled. “The same day ours went up, another campaign went up and covered all our ads up and that’s kind of it, so we flushed thousands of dollars that wasn’t ideal to be spending on this really rogue marketing effort and I learned that that kind of marketing is something that brands who have an excess budget can afford to do, but not brands who are trying to scale in a smart way.”

On the most useful business advice she’s learned along the way: 

“Ten people are going to tell you no, but if you know the answer is yes, then you have to follow your own gut because people don’t have your vision, they’re not in your brain, they don’t know what you’re thinking or what you can see,” she said. “Sure, you can be wrong, and yes, you can have some major failures, but at least you saw some of those things through. When I was like, ‘I’m going to make Toast famous and she’s going to bring awareness about puppy mill rescue and we’re going to do all this stuff,’ people were like, ‘That’s weird and that’s not a thing.’ And I think that that’s just the theme with every job I’ve had—where I’m making a left turn and it takes a minute for everyone to see where I’m going.”

Katie Sturino; E! Illustration

So, what’s that next turn for Katie? A new book called Body Talk: How to Embrace Your Body and Start Living Your Best Life. “Every woman that I’ve ever met in my life has a problem with her body, and I used to have a problem with my body, too. I still do some days,” Katie said. “This is basically a workbook that’s going to help you, whoever you are, whatever size you are, move past, or start to move away from the obsessive bad feelings and just basically the body negativity merry-go-round that so many women that I know of all sizes live on.”

And while she continues to champion for more sizes and encourage her followers to throw any restrictive notions about dressing out the nearest window, perhaps the most important lesson she has to impart is this: “At my thinnest, when I was not being a healthy person, my life didn’t change,” she said. “I didn’t start a super successful beauty company. I wasn’t coming out with a book. I didn’t have a husband who I adore. All these things happened when I accepted my body. They didn’t happen when I was falling asleep at 8 o’clock because I didn’t eat dinner.”

Body Talk is available now. 

Below Deck Mediterranean's Katie Flood Teases Drama With Her Interior Team

In an exclusive chat with E! News, chief stewardess Katie Flood opened up about her interior team on season six of Below Deck Mediterranean. See what she had to say.

Watch: What We’ve Learned About Yachting From “Below Deck”

It’s never easy being the boss.

In an exclusive chat with E! News, Below Deck Mediterranean‘s Katie Flood, who is the season six chief stewardess, opened up about her interior crew on Lady Michelle, including the drama fans can expect from the new episodes. For those who may’ve missed it, the season six trailer teased plenty of push back from Katie’s team.

Specifically, we saw the chief stew facing off with one of her stewardesses, named Lexi Wilson. In the footage, Katie snapped, “Right now, I’m pissed off with you.”

Yet, as Lexi informed Katie in the trailer, she did not care. “I’m like, leaving,” she said before noting on the phone, “Hey, mom. I’m quitting this boat.”

Although Katie didn’t give too much away about the drama, she did acknowledge that, in the yachting industry, “s–t happens,” adding, “That’s why there’s a show about it.”

As she continued, the New Zealand yachtie reminded us that the job required people with “different personalities,” who have never met, to work together, noting, “It’s like, we’re still learning about each other, still figuring how to work together. In what world would that ever run completely smoothly?”

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Below Deck Mediterranean Season 6: Meet the Cast

Katie said it was “impossible” to avoid any bumps in this job, describing the situation as “a navigational process.”

Thankfully, Katie did find an ally in fellow department head, Malia White. And it seems the chief stew and the returning bosun built a great friendship over the season as Katie revealed that she “would have not survived” without Malia.

Bravo

“She is incredible, she is amazing at her job,” she said of her co-star. “And, you know, I think we worked really well together, which helped blend in the rest of the crew. There wasn’t really [adversity] between us and deck.”

The chief stew further praised Malia for her ability to wrangle the crew and to get them to work as a team. “I think together, we made that happen,” she continued. “And, you know, she saved my ass a lot of the time. You’ll see what I’m talking about. I could’ve not done the season without her.”

Later on, Katie made it clear that there is plenty of drama to expect during season six. Namely, she credited her upcoming “emotional moments” on TV to the pressures that come with being chief stew.

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“I sure am not gonna enjoy watching myself cry on TV, I know my mom’s not gonna like that,” she elaborated. “I talk about it on the show, I do struggle with anxiety, and that was a really hard time for me, what I was going through at that particular time.”

While Katie said she isn’t looking forward to reliving those intense moments, she believes viewers “will be able to relate to” them.

Below Deck Mediterranean premieres Monday, June 28 at 9 p.m. on Bravo. All new episodes will be available on Peacock one week early, starting June 21.

(E!, Bravo and Peacock are all part of the NBCUniversal family.)

Below Deck Mediterranean's Katie Flood Talks Taking Over for Hannah Ferrier

In an exclusive chat with E! News, Below Deck Mediterranean's Katie Flood discussed stepping into Hannah Ferrier's old role. See what she had to say.

Watch: What We’ve Learned About Yachting From “Below Deck”

Katie Flood is ready to make a splash.

In an exclusive chat with E! News, Below Deck Mediterranean‘s season six chief stewardess opened up about her new gig and addressed taking over for her popular predecessor, Hannah Ferrier. Heading into the new season, which premieres Monday, June 28 on Bravo, the New Zealand yachtie hoped that fans will give her a chance to show her leadership style.

“Being a chief stew, OK, we all know the job,” she started off. “But every one of us have a different way of doing it or bring different strengths to the table. So, I just think it will be refreshing for the viewers, maybe.”

As she continued, Katie acknowledged that some fans may not be “happy that Hannah’s not here,” as this is the first season without the Australian yachtie. Yet, Katie reminded us that the situation ultimately “worked out good” since Hannah’s “in a completely different stage of life now.”

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Below Deck Mediterranean Season 6: Meet the Cast

For those who may’ve missed it, Hannah, who was the upstairs-downstairs show’s chief stewardess between 2016 and 2020, was fired by Captain Sandy Yawn during season five over undeclared Valium and a CBD pen.

After saying bon voyage to the show, Hannah revealed that she was pregnant with her first child. And, in October 2020, the former Below Deck Med star gave birth to a daughter, named Ava Grace Roberts.

Laurent Basset/Bravo; Karolina Wojtasik/Bravo

While we’ll certainly miss Hannah on Below Deck Med, we’re excited to get to know more about Katie, who has worked in the industry for seven years. On joining the Bravo hit, Katie revealed, “This opportunity sort of fell in my lap at the right time, and all signs pointed towards me doing this. So, I just went with my gut and here we are.”

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Yet, as the season six trailer already teased, emotions will run high in the new episodes. “You know, I’m not perfect,” Katie said on the drama to come. “I am a human. I do have emotions. Things do affect me. You know, there’s so much pressure in this role, and then it’s like, you add the lack of sleep, the demanding guests, the drinking, like, all this stuff. It sort of boils up, and that’s when you have these emotional moments.”

If we weren’t all aboard for season six before, we are now!

Watch: 8 Things to Know About NBCUniversal’s Peacock

Below Deck Mediterranean premieres Monday, June 28 at 9 p.m. on Bravo. All new episodes will be available on Peacock one week early, starting June 21.

(E!, Bravo and Peacock are all part of the NBCUniversal family.)

The Bachelorette's Katie Thurston Shares She's a Sexual Assault Survivor

During an emotional episode of The Bachelorette, Katie Thurston told the contestants on a group date that she's a survivor of sexual assault.

The Bachelorette star Katie Thurston opened up during the latest episode about being a survivor of sexual assault.

On Monday, June 21, during a tense group date that involved the contestants sharing moments from their past that they regret, Katie then proved she was similarly ready to be vulnerable by describing an incident of sexual trauma she experienced 10 years ago. In recalling the assault, she revealed she had yet to even tell her mom about it.

“I know you see me today as this very sex-positive woman who’s very confident, but she hasn’t always been here,” Katie said. “Ten years ago, it was New Year’s Eve, and I had been drinking. I was involved in a situation where there wasn’t consent, and that is not something I wish upon anybody. And I was in denial about what happened, so much so that I tried to form a relationship with him because I didn’t wanna believe what actually had happened.”

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Biggest Off-Camera Scandals in Bachelor History

The 30-year-old reality TV star, who was famous for bringing a sex toy on Matt James‘ season of The Bachelor, went on to say that this experience led her to have a “very unhealthy relationship” with sex. 

“I didn’t want to have sex, which affects the relationship,” she recalled. “I didn’t like talking about sex. And it’s taken me a long time to get to where I am now in being open and comfortable talking about it and loving myself and accepting things that I can no longer control. And I just want you guys to know that I’ve come a long way in who I was 10 years ago, and how important consent is, how important communication is.” 

ABC/Andrew Eccles

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She also participated in an episode of the podcast Talking It Out that posted that evening, where she told Bachelor Nation’s Mike Johnson and Bryan Abasolo that she hadn’t initially intended to share this story with the group. 

“As we all sat there and started to open up, it actually became this very intimate setting of being vulnerable and sharing these very deep stories that are personal to each of us in our own way,” Katie explained. “Going into it, I didn’t think I was going to ever share something like that.”

She continued, “But after hearing these men just really open up and cry…I just felt so comforted and supported in this safe circle, and I just had to let them know my story.”

For more coverage of the episode, click here.