Exclusive Interview
’90 Day Fiancé’s Mallorie DeGrange Unpacks Rasit’s Jealousy & History With Brandon
What To Know
- Mallorie DeGrange was a longtime 90 Day Fiancé fan before becoming a Season 12 cast member with fiancé Rasit Kebabci.
- She took Swooon inside her friendship with an ex-fling, Brandon, which has caused jealousy from Rasit.
- Mallorie teased that the drama between Rasit and Brandon is far from over.
This season of 90 Day Fiancé, viewers have gotten to know Mallorie DeGrange and her Turkish fiancé, Rasit Kebabci. Turns out, before the Alabamian was sharing her prenup and ex-hook-up drama on the TLC series, she was a massive fan of the show. This wasn’t even her first time applying.
“Ironically enough, I definitely was a 90 Day fan,” the Season 12 star admitted to Swooon. She revealed that before she applied with Rasit, she and a coworker sent in an application “as a joke… Just for the fun of it.”
The second time around, she and Rasit qualified for the show, but she still applied without expecting to hear back. “Somebody had reached out to me, and then I didn’t really hear anything else back until three or four months later. Somebody had reached back out to me, and I was just like, ‘Are you guys serious?'” They asked for a couple of casting tapes, interviews with their friends, and more. Still, Mallorie did not believe TLC was seriously considering them.
“I was like, ‘Okay… But this was a joke, like this wasn’t serious at all.’ And they were like, ‘That’s okay. We love you guys, we want you on the next season,'” Mallorie revealed. “I was just like, ‘Really? I mean, I was transparent with everyone I talked to. This was a joke. We don’t have enough of the drama you guys want. We’re too normal.'”
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Of course, Mallorie and Rasit’s love story was anything but “normal.” She revealed to Swooon that she met Rasit during a girls’ trip to Greece. “I didn’t think anything was going to come out of that one night with him. I think we definitely did connect, but I was like, ‘We live halfway across the world, there’s no way that this is going to work.'” However, when she came back to America, “He just never went away.”
She explained, “He was very persistent. Texting me, calling me, video chatting me on WhatsApp, and stuff like that. I had such a horrible run of relationships prior to this that I had accepted it. I was like, ‘I’ll be single. It’s fine. I’ll do my thing. I’m accepting this single life.’ And so I just… I was mean to him in a way.” Still, after some convincing, she decided to give Rasit a serious chance.
After meeting in the summer of 2023, the two dated online until the winter of 2024, when she went to Turkey for two and a half weeks. “That’s when he proposed to me, and I met everyone in his family and his friends, and I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh. Okay, here we go.'” Over a year later, he was in the States with a K-1 visa in hand.
“Rasit really has, like, softened my heart,” Mallorie admitted, looking back on their time together. “I had given up on finding the one. He’s just such an incredible human being. He has such a big heart. He brings me a different perspective that I [wouldn’t usually] look at. We bring out the best sides of each other.”
Someone who doesn’t bring out the best side of Rasit? Mallorie’s ex-fling, Brandon. According to Mallorie, he came into her life in 2021, and they hooked up for about a month or two, but since then they haven’t so much as touched. “He is a friend and a friend only.”
When Mallorie got into her car accident with her friend Michaela, “Michaela’s husband reached out to Brandon. He told him immediately what happened. He was like, ‘You have to get a hold of Mallorie’s sister.’ So he reached out to my sister on social media, and because of him, that’s how my family knew.”
For Rasit, it was a major culture shock finding out that Mallorie was so close to someone she used to be involved with. “I had a feeling that Rasit wasn’t going to take the situation very well,” she admitted. “It’s still an ongoing situation as the season plays out. I didn’t think it would escalate the way it would. I know Rasit is very jealous over me, and he’s very protective of me. But I thought it was gonna be like a little speed bump. It’s more than that.”
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Another speed bump in their relationship has been Mallorie’s request for a prenup. She explained, “Once the K-1 got approved and we were moving towards his interview and planning for him to come to America, it slowly trickled into the back of my mind. Like I said, I’m not a millionaire. I don’t have tons and tons of money, you know? But I bought my house in 2022. I worked my a** off. Nobody helped me get that house.”
She added, “I was previously married, and I was burned in that divorce pretty badly, so I guess you could say I learned from my mistakes.” Looking back at that marriage, she explained, “I was married when I was 19. It didn’t last very long. It was only a year, but the relationship was longer than that. And I think I just learned that I learned to stand up for myself. There were certain things that made the relationship very unhealthy, and I was thankful at the time that people in my life were able to open my eyes up to that.”
Expressing that she needed to look out for herself this time around, Mallorie admitted, “If that sounds selfish, then, you know, that’s selfish. But from my personal [experience], it’s just what I’ve been through. At the end of the day, I have to take care of myself.”
Looking forward to the rest of the season, Mallorie teased, “The ‘Brandy’ saga is not over. Buckle up, because it hasn’t even really started yet. I think people will be surprised at the escalation of Rasit and Brandon, and the outcome of that relationship.”
She added, “It’s gonna escalate, so definitely stay tuned.”
90 Day Fiancé, Season 12, Sundays at 8/7c, TLC
