Too Hot to Handle’s Charlie Talks Choosing Katherine Over Lucy

Too Hot to Handle season 6 star Charlie Jeer was initially all-in on Lucy Syed — until the jaw-dropping moment he decided to dump her in favor of costar Katherine LaPrell.

“It’s really difficult to pinpoint one specific instance where I was like, ‘Oh no, it’s Kat I want and not Lucy.’ I think there’s obviously a lot of stuff that isn’t shown and isn’t seen,” Charlie, 21, exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, July 25. “There’s a lot of downtime that we do get to have in the retreat when other people are off doing their things. And in those times, it was literally just more of a vibe thing that I was getting from Kat. I was actually catching myself [being] not too interested in spending loads of time with Lucy, and that’s nothing against her at all.”

Charlie, Lucy, 28, and Katherine, 28, were all OG contestants on Too Hot to Handle season 6, and involved in a love triangle straightaway. After he kissed Lucy, Katherine and Kylisha Jageshar on the first night, authoritative cone Lana sent him to banishment. There, the British model realized his feelings were the strongest for Lucy.

Upon his return to the retreat, Charlie apologized to Lucy with a saxophone serenade. They appeared to be getting closer while Katherine moved on with season 5 alum Louis Russell. In the second batch of new episodes, now streaming on Netflix, Charlie realized that he was gravitating toward Katherine even more.

“I think in the position I’m in now, I consider and say that a relationship has to make you grow and it has to excite you,” Charlie told Us. “I think that very quickly when I was with Lucy, I felt very safe, very tied down, and I didn’t feel excited in that situation, whereas when I was with Kat, even the conversation was exciting to me.”

He continued, “I had to just follow that impulse and just go for it and give it a try. When I started to feel that, I realized that, ‘OK, if I’m having these feelings, then Lucy isn’t right for me and so I have to go and explore this other option.’ That’s just what I went and did.”

According to Charlie, since Too Hot to Handle participants have “such a short time” in the villa, it is imperative to act on feelings or decisions “straightaway.” Part of Charlie’s reasoning came down to a lack of physicality with Lucy.

“I did say this to [Lucy] whilst we were in there [that] not having the physical between us is definitely making it harder for me to really know,” Charlie said on Thursday.” That’s just because in the past that was kind of a way that I was connecting with people, but it’s less about the physicality and whether or not we were kissing and doing the most, and it’s more about did we really feel like we really wanted to do that in that situation?”

Charlie knew he liked Lucy — and still asserts that the VIP hostess is “a great girl” — but found their connection to be too safe.

“People were calling us the ‘mom and dad of the retreat,’ and it did really feel like the mom and dad of the retreat because it was like, ‘We’ve got all of these kids and we’re watching them and always looking after the kids that we are not really having fun ourselves,’” Charlie explained. “I’m a 21-year-old lad; I don’t need that. I know that it can come across in maybe a way that’s like, ‘Oh, I was seeing Kat do the most with Louis and Lucy kind of wasn’t giving me that energy, so I jumped ship’ … but for me, in that moment, that’s not how it felt at all.”

When Charlie was partnered with Lucy, Katherine and Louis, 22, were together and frequently broke Lana’s no-sex rules. After choosing Katherine during the final days of the retreat, Charlie had to watch her and Louis’ steamy trysts play out on the Netflix series when filming wrapped.

“It’s not, like, the easiest thing to see in the world,” Charlie admitted to Us. “I actually watched it with all of my friends and we were sat around and my friends said to me, ‘You know what, Charlie? That’s tough what you’ve just watched.’ And they were like, ‘I couldn’t deal with watching my girlfriend do that … but if anyone can deal with it, it’s you.’”

Too Hot to Handle is currently streaming on Netflix. New episodes drop on Fridays.

With reporting by Christina Garibaldi