Meet The Bachelor: A Movieline Chat With Dreamy Pilot Jake Pavelka

I'm relieved to hear that you really did not know who you were going to pick at the rose ceremonies. In seasons past, the bachelor will go up to that dimly lit room filled with photos of each girl, and painstakingly talk through his emotions. And I always questioned the genuiness of that moment. I didn't understand how you could not just know that Tammy was the girl for you.

I can't speak for the other bachelors and bachelorettes but that is something that I wished for. I wanted this to be hard. I was hoping that every girl on paper was a perfect match for me. And boy, I got my wish.

I can't imagine. How much input did you have in choosing the dates?'

I pushed pretty hard for an aviation-based season, near and dear to my heart. Each date though, [the producers and I] would sit down and do some planning. For the most part, they had a general direction for which dates they thought would be really good and what they would do is present me with a series of dates. And I would say, "Yeah, that is awesome and something that I would absolutely do with a girl." They would present some options and then we would tweak them together on one of them. I was able to make each of the dates my own.

Do you remember a date that producers suggested that you refused?

When we were planning, that was one of the things they were asking me, you know, "Describe the most romantic date you've ever been on. Describe the most romantic date you would like to ever go on." Different things like that when they were trying to figure out my temperament and how I thought, how I dated. What they do is study your dating patterns. The greatest thing about it is when you have an outside set of eyes looking in and you're talking about past relationships, you start learning a lot about yourself.

How many times did you get to fly during the season?

Oh boy. As you know, there is always a lot of aerial stuff on the show. We were off the ground several times this season.

What was the most surprising thing for you now that you were at the center of the Bachelor?

A lot of things are coming to mind but probably the most surprising is that at 31, I never thought that I could pull all of those overnighters anymore. When you're filming, you pull a lot of overnighters -- or allnighters -- I say overnighters. I mean stay up all night. I didn't think I had the energy to do that anymore. What's funny is that you know when you get 25 women living on top of each other in a small mansion -- whatever sized mansion it is -- is you know, you have 25 people there and it's small. How quickly you learn to deal with the drama and not let it affect how you're feeling. What I mean by that is you could take 25 carbon copies of me and put them together in a house and it doesn't matter, we're going to butt heads about something. You know, you hear about it, take it with a grain of salt, roll it off and just keep going.

Was there one bachelor whose season you really admired and you aimed to replicate this year?

If I had to compare myself to anybody, it would probably be Jason Mesnick. But in that, I don't know him very well at all. We're probably very different in decision making.

I was on the Bachelor message boards earlier today and some of your fans had uncovered a few clips from your role on Walker, Texas Ranger as a younger version of Chuck Norris' character (video below). How did that come about?

That came about when I was in high school in 1996. What happened was I was just trying my hand at a little bit of acting. I don't know if they had a script rewrite or what happened but I was called in for an audition but I got the part because I was the same height as Chuck Norris. It wasn't that I was talented, I was just the right height. So I got through casting and they asked me if I could shoot the next day and it was one of the neatest things I've ever done. I went back for a couple of episodes but I learned that in real life, acting was not for me. It was a really special time in my life though. [Chuck] is by far, one of the nicest guys I ever met.

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