Courtney Robertson Approves of Bachelor’s Maria Playing the ‘I Might Leave Card’ With Joey

Courtney Robertson approves of Bachelor season 28 contestant Maria Georgas taking a cue from her playbook ahead of Joey Graziadei's hometowns.

"I really see it between them, [but] I do think that the process is starting to get to her. She did play the, you know, 'I might leave card,' which was well played. I did that right before hometowns. ... Like, 'Make me stay.' ... It's almost like trying to pull more out from the Bachelor to tell me how you feel about me,'" Courtney began on Us Weekly's "Here for the Right Reasons" podcast while recapping the Monday, February 26, episode of the ABC show.

Courtney — who won Ben Flajnik's season 16 of The Bachelor after being painted as the villain in the house — noted that she reached out to Maria earlier in the season.

"She's been lovely, and I just said, 'Hey, if you need anything.' [Because] I was like, 'Oh shoot, she's getting maybe a villain edit.' But I don't think she got it at all [in the end]. And I really like her style. I do think she's an introvert. She mentioned that [and] I'm a total homebody too. And the whole process, I can't wait to hear more of her side of the story. And she's also such TV gold. I'm sure that they were pulling her into interviews constantly," Courtney said. "[She's] so funny. She's so confident. And as soon as the girls started kind of ganging up on her, that hit so close to home for me because the girls were doing that to me and they were running to the Bachelor and saying like, 'Oh, she's this or that.' So I felt for her. I was like, ‘I have lived through that.’ And my Bachelor, I remember him saying to the girls, 'Well, what is she doing?' ... They just didn't like me. There was no real, like, 'Oh, she did this or X, Y and Z.' So I'm glad that it didn't sway his perception of her. It's very similar to my story line and then her being like, 'Hey, I don't know.'"

Biggest ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Bachelorette’ Villains

Courtney recalled that she felt "nervous" ahead of hometowns and testing the Bachelor is a bit of "self-sabotage" because it's getting too real. While Joey didn't really take the bait with Maria, Courtney thinks Maria played her return right.

"She was apologetic. Whatever producer talked to her in that bathroom, gets a gold medal because they show her crying and they're talking to someone and they were like, 'This is not working,'" Courtney suggested. "She handled it well, she bounced back. And then she got what happened to me on my season. ... I pulled the ‘make me stay,’ and then he pulled me aside at the rose ceremony and he said, 'I need to know [that] if I'm taking you that you're going to stay.' And, I mean, you see her bounce off when he's like, 'Can I talk to you?' She instantly looks like, 'Oh, this is exciting.' She didn't look worried like, 'Oh, he's going to send me home.' So it's nice she got that extra time."

Courtney agreed with Us that the music plays a part in how the audience may feel about a contestant, reiterating, "They could have easily made Maria the villain."

Relive the Most Intense ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Bachelorette’ Scandals of All Time

"They could have easily played the bad music when the girls were trying to make her out to be the bully," she said. "And then she's like, 'Hey, I've been bullied [in my life].' And the music that they were playing, they could have easily not shown [comment] and they gave her a positive edit there."

Courtney isn't the only one defending Maria after she had issues with Madina Alam, Sydney Gordon and Lea Cayanan.

"I didn’t get to see the group settings. I think that Maria can sometimes be misunderstood," Joey told Us earlier this month. "I get that she explained that herself — that she’s a little rough around the edges and was surprised that she didn’t get along with a lot of the women in the house.”

The Bachelor airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.