Grant Ellis shouldn’t be making an enormous deal about being solely the second Black star of “The Bachelor.” His focus is on discovering real love.
“My experience has been great,” the previous professional basketball participant and present day dealer stated final week throughout a video name. “It’s been a whirlwind — a lot of emotion, a lot of decision-making. But overall, it’s been great. I have no complaints.”
Although Ellis is targeted on romance, the twenty ninth season of the present, launching Monday, might be scrutinized as maybe essentially the most essential take a look at but for the favored ABC franchise, which has frequently been accused by critics and former Black individuals of racism and cultural insensitivity since its 2002 premiere. Regardless of pledges by government producers to right previous wrongs, troubling misfires within the dealing with of race in latest seasons of “The Bachelor” and spinoff “The Bachelorette” have solid doubt over these guarantees to enhance, putting added significance on Ellis’ flip within the highlight.
His quest for love as he dates 25 girls competing to be his spouse comes 4 years after the season starring Matt James, the primary Black Bachelor, turned essentially the most disastrous for the franchise, tainted by an uproar after pictures surfaced of contestant Rachael Kirkconnell at an antebellum South-themed social gathering. Then-host Chris Harrison defended Kirkconnell in a combative interview with former “Bachelorette” star Rachel Lindsay on “Extra,” the place she was a correspondent, which stoked the controversy additional and finally led to Harrison’s departure from the franchise after practically 20 years.
James later charged the all-white producing staff of betraying their promise to point out him as an achieved Black man who had overcome many private {and professional} challenges. Government producer Bennett Graebner stated in an interview with The Instances final 12 months that the present “let Matt down” and that manufacturing sources had been established that weren’t in place throughout James’ season, “which went wrong on so many levels.”
Ellis sidestepped questions in regards to the previous struggles of the franchise and James’ season.
Grant Ellis is the middle of the twenty ninth season of “The Bachelor.”
(John Fleenor / Disney)
“I think Matt handled himself really well, but the takeaway I have is really about my season,” he stated. “The way my season turned out is great. I wish Matt the best at what he does, and I’m sure he’ll do great things.”
(Notably, James introduced on Jan. 16 that he and Kirkconnell, who turned a pair after departing the franchise, have cut up up.)
When pressed on whether or not he had any response to James’ complaints, Ellis was tight-lipped. “I watched the season but really didn’t get involved in all the controversy. I saw the love story that unfolded. As far as anything else, I really don’t have a lot to say.”
Graebner and fellow showrunner Claire Freeland weren’t obtainable for remark.
Whereas the individuals on “The Bachelor” and spinoff “The Bachelorette” have grow to be extra numerous after years of that includes predominantly white casts, the franchise has not turned the nook on its troubled previous. The issues embrace the bullying of contestants of colour by the Bachelor Nation fan base and accusations that producers failed to guard its stars from the harassment, in addition to spotty vetting that allowed contestants who had posted racially offensive content material on social media to seem on the present.
The backlash escalated throughout the newest season of “The Bachelorette” starring Jenn Tran, the primary Asian girl to guide the franchise.
Whereas Graebner and Freeland promoted the milestone of Tran’s casting, they acknowledged the ahead motion was diminished by the near-absence of Asian suitors.
The season advanced into one other debacle within the reside finale when a distraught Tran revealed that the person she had chosen as her husband-to-be, Devin Strader, had ended their engagement a month earlier than the published. Strader joined Tran onstage minutes later, and he or she wept because the footage of her joyous proposal to him was performed again. Viewers accused the present of cruelty in making Tran relive her heartbreak on reside tv.
Stories surfaced following the finale that Strader had been arrested in 2017 on suspicion of burglarizing the home of an ex-girlfriend. He had not knowledgeable producers of the arrest when he was interviewed for the present.
Graebner and Freeland declined to touch upon why Strader’s arrest was not found within the vetting course of. Additionally they refused touch upon why Jodi Baskerville, who turned the franchise’s first Black government producer in 2021 after the racism scandal that upended James’ season, departed throughout Tran’s season.