Bachelorette alum Rachel Lindsay is known to not stay quiet about important matters, and this time she’s pointing out a few big problems with the current Bachelor formula.
“If I could change one thing, it’s that the show doesn’t reflect the real world,” the 34-year-old reality star told The Associated Press in a fall interview, published on Monday, March 2. “You’re just now having, on Bachelor in Paradise, a same-sex relationship and they had to bring somebody who wasn’t even a cast member on the show to make that happen.”
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The former Bachelorette made her comments pointing to Demi Burnett. On season 6 of Bachelor in Paradise, Burnett’s girlfriend from home, Kristian Haggerty, joined the show. (Although the par did get engaged at the end of the season in 2019, they later called it quits.)
Lindsay, the only black lead in the franchise’s history, explained that she feels like it’s her responsibility to continue to ask the tough questions and give helpful suggestions for how the Bachelor and Bachelor franchises could be better.
“The girls all look the same way. My first reaction to when someone said, ‘You should be on The Bachelor,’ [was] ‘Black people don’t go far on that show.’ We laughed about it but it’s actually true,” the lawyer said. “My biggest complaint is that the show does not reflect what the real world looks like. I would have women of all ages. I mean, there has to be a cut-off point, but I’d have women of different shapes, sizes, backgrounds, ethnicities. I would change it completely.”
The reality star, who married the winner of her season, Bryan Abasolo, later admitted that she doesn’t think The Bachelor will continue in its current format. Lindsay’s interview was published hours after ABC announced their Bachelorette season 16 star Clare Crawley, who previously appeared on The Bachelor, Bachelor In Paradise and The Bachelor Winter Games. Crawley, 38, is the oldest female lead in the franchise’s history.
“I honestly don’t know how much longer the show can survive in this day and age, just to be honest, because social media spoils so many things,” she told the publication. “So many people come on, no job, no career, never worked a day in their life because they’re going to build it off of being Instagram famous or any other type of social media that you want to insert in there. I think it’s going to be harder for them to find relationships that work. … The show is either going to have to change or it’s gonna end.”
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Brittany R
Brittany is a writer who is obsessed with rom-com movies, Gossip Girl, reality television, fashion, and pop-culture. When she isn't reporting on the latest celeb buzz, she is filling up her online shopping cart without checking out.
