Alex Nation and Richie Strahan Interview September 2016

Alex Nation and Richie Strahan met on The Bachelor and fell head-over-heels in love with each other. Their declaration of love on the finale night was the perfect end to an unconventional love story, and the beautiful beginning of a more conventional one. Now, two weeks on from that big night, they're doing all the things regular couples do: hitting local events, sharing sweet snaps on Instagram, meeting each other's families and, we assume, making up for the last few months of lost time.

When their romance was revealed, Alex and Richie didn't receive a flood of love and support like they should have. Instead, they copped a lot of nasty speculation, unwarranted criticism and straight-up cruelty — and it wasn't cool. When we sat down for a chat with them earlier today, we wanted to know everything: how they're going (yes, they're still in love), whether or not they expected the criticism (they didn't) and whether or not they would go through it all again to find each other. Keep reading to see what they had to say!

POPSUGAR Australia: How are you both?

Richie: I'm good thanks, but you'll have to excuse my voice!

Alex: He's lost his voice!

Richie: I was at the Perth Royal Show and let's just say I screamed a lot . . . [laughs].

PS: Congratulations on the show and everything that's happened since. It's only been about two weeks now, but how do you feel about it all looking back?

Alex: Yeah, we're very happy. It's so nice to be able to just enjoy this time together. We've been through a pretty crazy six months and it's just so nice to do normal things together.

Richie: Alex has been spending a bit of time with me in Perth and then I'm going to spend a bit of time with her in Melbourne. We've been catching up with my sister and my family, my mum, meeting all my friends and just doing all the normal relationship stuff.

Alex: And I've absolutely loved all of that, meeting all his friends, seeing Kate [Richie's mum] again . . . It's been amazing. It's all the stuff you look forward to in a new relationship.

PS: And how is it all going with Alana and Kate [Richie's mum and sister]? Obviously your first meeting with them was made into a big deal on the TV show . . .

Richie: Yeah no, that was a bit of TV 'reality.' My mum and my sister just absolutely love Alex and say such wonderful things about her. My sister is so happy — she's found another fashionista girlfriend [laughs]. Alex and my sister went to the Telstra Perth Fashion Festival together! They we're like, "We're gonna go out, Rich, you stay at home." They had a fantastic time and then, yeah, we met up with my mum and had a ball.

PS: How did you guys cope with the crazy backlash? Were you warned by Network Ten or Warner Bros. that it could go that way?

Richie: It actually did come as quite a surprise. We certainly weren't warned about it by Channel Ten or Warner Bros. When we watched the show and saw what was being put on TV, we both understood that they were certainly building that result.

Alex: Yeah, we understood.

Richie: Because there were a lot of really lovely moments I shared with Alex that we wanted to shown. And some of the stuff that was shown, from our side, watching it, we could see it was really being built up.

Alex: That side of it was a little bit disappointing.

Richie: Yeah, we would really have liked to have more of our love story shown, so people could have gotten behind us a lot more instead of going that other angle. But, you know, that's their prerogative. They're making a TV show and you've got to really . . . Well, you like to say you put your trust in them, but yeah we certainly were quite surprised. In saying that, though, it really wasn't us that was seeing [all the negativity]. The radio stations, everyone was telling us there was a lot of negativity out there. We hadn't seen it or heard it yet. Once the dust settled, we saw some of the comments and messages that we'd received on social media and we were like, "Holy moly, people are really invested." It's unfortunate.

Alex: Well, the nice thing is that we're seeing a lot of positivity now. People are absolutely beautiful on our posts and things like that, there's a lot of support and positivity out there now.

Richie: Some of the messages were really bad, and other people were defending us. We were so humbled by the people who do like us and go in to bat for us.

Alex: The thing is, at the end of the day and after everything has settled, Rich and I have each other and our friends and family and that's all that matters.

Richie: Two weeks on from all this madness, I'm lounging on the couch with my love and I'm just so rapt. Like, I couldn't . . . I'm so happy.

Alex: We're so happy. The rubbish that's out there, it doesn't affect us in the way that it worries us or anything like that. Anything like that is just a little bit disappointing, that's all.

Richie: Yeah, it would have been great to have Australia behind us.

PS: The dust settles really quickly on shows like this — I think the worst of it is over. I was a bit disappointed we didn't get to see how great you are, Alex. Everyone we spoke to loved you but we didn't get to see enough of that on the TV show, I think.

Alex: Yeah it was interesting, you know? I remember my girlfriends were like, "Oh, everyone gets an edit, but people will love you," and I was like, "Yeah, I cracked jokes, I was light-hearted . . ." and then it came out that I was a stage-five clinger like American Psycho and I was like, "Jesus! Where did that come from?" [Laughs] I just laugh it off, though. They're making a TV show and there's a lot of content there.

PS: When you see the magazine covers that are saying you've split, you're pregnant, you're married . . . How do you react?

Alex: We laugh it off. We've been busy, haven't we! Pregnant, we've split up, we got married [laughs].

Richie: All in two days [laughs]! The one thing I got a little bit annoyed at was in Woman's Day, the "Shock Split." They used all the images from —

Alex: Our exclusive!

Richie: Yeah, we'd finished the show, we were on a high, we'd given them some really lovely pictures of us in Bali, having the time of our lives, and they used that exclusive to have a headline that we'd split. It was like we'd bent over backwards to help them, and then it was a massive stab in the back. We were just frustrated. But again, water off a duck's back. We don't give that much of a sh*t about it, it just would've been nice if we had a bit more of a backing there but they'd kind of thrown us under a bus, which is just a shame.

PS: Well you're good people — it's always a shock when something is twisted.

Alex: Yeah, definitely!

Richie: Yeah, we felt like we'd built a pretty good relationship over that entire three months, doing everything that they wanted and all the good stuff they required. They could have done something really beautiful.

Alex: I waited for that Monday like, "Oh, babe, we've got our exclusive with Woman's Day, I can't wait to see it!" Our beautiful pictures from Bali and our love story that transpired on television. And then we saw it and it was like, "Shock Split!" It was just like . . . One of those moments where we'd given everyone our all. We'd done our absolute best to accommodate everyone and then to see that, it was like, "Gosh."

Richie: It was pretty disappointing . . .

Alex: But then, it makes you really, really value the people who are genuinely there for you — even more.

PS: Would you guys do it again? It's been worth it, right?

Alex: It's absolutely worth it. Despite all the challenges and things like that, I absolutely loved my time on the show. I embraced every single moment and it was so worth it. But I do have to say . . . I've had people approach me and ask me if they should go on the show. And I think my answer is always that you have to really know yourself and who you are. You have to be strong to go on a show like that because nothing can prepare you for what comes afterwards. I certainly wasn't prepared. It makes you stronger but I think you definitely have to be very confident in yourself if you do something like that.

Richie: It's a lot different to what people expect. I certainly don't regret it, I would do it again 100 percent because it led me to Alex. I feel like I found my Lego piece.