In the midst of ongoing controversy, The bachelor the franchise is committing to not one, but two seasons of The maiden.
The long franchise of real dates is doubling down in its series led by women for what will be the 17th and 18th seasons. The 17th cycle of The maiden will star in Katie Thurston and will air this summer. The 18th season, which is due to air in the fall, will star Michelle Young.
Thurston and Young were pulled from the current season The bachelor and were officially announced during Monday’s long-awaited meeting Bachelor: After the Final Rose special final, where Young was revealed as runner-up to the problematic competitor Rachael Kirkconnell in the competition for the historic final rose Bachelor star Matt James.
“We are the Bachelorettes!” Young and Thurston said of their double reveal and individual seasons in a brief appearance Monday night. “I was a little nervous, but when I found out it was two different seasons, I was here for it. I am excited to have someone to relate to and share notes with as we go,” said Young. Thurston added that she is ready to find love: “I’ve seen it work before. Why can’t it work for me?”
Thurston’s season production is already underway without the franchise’s embattled face, Chris Harrison, as The Hollywood Reporter reported. On Friday night, ABC and producers Warner Horizon took Harrison’s hiatus from The maiden official when they announced that single stars Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe would assume their roles as presenter for what viewers now know will be Thurston’s season.
“We support Chris in the work he is committed to doing. In his absence, former Bachelorettes Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe will support the new Bachelorette next season,” reads the joint statement, which does not name the pair as “co- hosts. “Multiple sources said THR that Adams and Bristowe will take on a role as backstage mentors, as an official decision on Harrison’s future as a host has yet to be made. (In addition to appearing at the pre-recorded end of Monday, Harrison’s voice was also heard triggering the post-show.)
The maiden traditionally airs in the spring, following The bachelor station. The ongoing pandemic has impacted and changed Hollywood productions, however, and 2021 will mark the first calendar year to transmit the two. single seasons. (There is no official word yet on the summer program Bachelor in Paradise or the planned spin-off of “seniors”, which has been casting calls during The bachelor station.)
The 2020 cycle of The maiden, which aired in the fall due to the pandemic, was new in the sense that the season was split between the original star Clare Crawley and Adams, who took Crawley’s place midway as the leader. Just another year featured two Bachelorettes in one season by design – Bristowe in 2015 (contestants voted between Bristowe and Britt Nilsson and in the second episode, Bristowe was elected the star). Next season will follow the plan established by the 2020 bubble seasons single and 2021 Bachelor cycles, which each filmed safely and without any COVID incidents.
Before moving on to another season, there were more and more requests for the franchise to solve its problems related to race and representation. The first black maiden, Rachel Lindsay, publicly suggested that the show hit the pause button to reevaluate before returning to production, while the team behind the successful reality franchise struggled in particular to move on after its widely doomed interview with Harrison. After he left, production started The maiden a week has been postponed to deal with the consequences, according to sources.
Friday’s statement from ABC and Warners, which came weeks after the February 9 interview, was the first public commitment that the work is being done behind the scenes. “As we continue the dialogue around achieving greater equity and inclusion within The bachelor franchise, we are committed to improving the BIPOC representation of our team, including among the ranks of executive producers, “says the joint statement, in part, addressing renewed criticism about the lack of diversity among decision makers in the successful program.
With Harrison announcing a plan to return, the series created by Mike Fleiss does not seem ready to close the door alone. Along with hosting The bachelor and its many developments since 2002, Harrison also serves as a producer.
Emmanuel I think, who was the host of Monday After the Final Rose special finale in Harrison’s absence, also said that Harrison is committing himself to educating himself. “People need to give him the opportunity, the grace and the time to do the job. And then they need to get the job he does,” Uncomfortable conversations with a black man author told Lindsay in an interview with Extra on Friday. During a recent appearance at ABC’s Good morning America, Harrison said she “has sought out leading scholars, teachers and religious leaders” since defending Kirkconnell on racism charges (she apologized twice before the final).
Despite the controversy overshadowing the current Bachelor season, off-camera drama also brought more attention to the successful franchise. And while James’ season ratings have dropped both in the general public and in the coveted 18-49 demo, the show’s declines are in line with those of broadcast TV as a whole this season. As the @BachelorData fan account has been monitoring (in the form of an illuminating graph), coverage of the national news of the scandal has resulted in key players – Harrison, James, Kirkconnell and Lindsay – all increasing their social media followers. “I think something you can definitely attribute this to is that people are following to see what will happen next,” said recently Suzana, who manages the account. THR from the public online until the end.
Lindsay, who at one point was forced to deactivate her accounts because of online bullying, continued to lead the conversation around issues involving race within the franchise. Prior to ABC and Warners’ commitment to do so, it had recently renewed its call for executive producers to diversify. “You have to have a person of color in the decision room,” she said after the March 9 episode aired an “uncomfortable” conversation between James and his distant father (James said the narrative perpetuated “dangerous stereotypes and negative representations of Black Pais in the media. “)
I think he made a special enlightening on the air with After the Final Rose, which was recorded last week, and when the special aired on Monday, viewers saw the TV presenter sailing through a tense meeting between James, the first black bachelor in 25 seasons, and Kirkconnell. After alluding to difficult times off-camera, James confirmed that he and Kirkconnell – who ended the season together – broke up because of off-camera revelations about her racially insensitive behavior in the past, which surfaced after the cameras stopped rotating. The separation brings The bachelor second consecutive post-show division, following Peter Weber at the start of the 2020 season. In total, only one Bachelor The star – Sean Lowe – is in a relationship with his winner, while two former stars (Arie Luyendyk Jr. and Jason Mesnick) remain with their runners-up.
Bachelorettes, on the other hand, stand a better chance – five of the 17 women continue with their final choices, including Adams. (Bristowe is in a relationship with another former franchise student.)
New stars Thurston and Young have emerged as fan favorites. After Thurston made her name with a memorable maneuver to get out of the limo at the premiere (she brought a pink vibrator), the smart and sex-positive social media competitor became the voice of reason amid a culture of bullying among the women of the house , and won praise from viewers for reporting this toxicity.
The cast of Young, a former Division 1 basketball player and kindergarten teacher, marks the fourth black star for the long franchise, after Lindsay in 2017, Adams in 2020 (as the first black and Latin star) and James in 2021 The castings of Adams and James were the result of renewed protests about the franchise’s lack of diversity in the wake of the 2020 national racial calculation. These changes resulted in the franchise hiring more color producers, bringing a diversity team as a resource behind the scenes and debuting historically diverse casts with the 2020 and 2021 cycles.
Those ones single and Bachelor seasons broke the tradition of not taking leads from the previous round; Crawley and Adams each came from several previous seasons (from The bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise), and James never appeared in the franchise before stepping into the lead role. The appointment of the two new Bachelorettes – no matter how unconventional – marks a return to the traditional casting cycle of a leading actor being a recent star. Thurston remains an exception, however, as she does not come from the last four contestants (only Hannah Brown before she was nominated as a single despite not finishing as a finalist).
James’ cast as the first Black Bachelor was criticized by several stars of the franchise as being a “bandaid”, particularly amid the continuing controversy over racism. And some expressed growing concern that black competitors were being scheduled to check a box. In a joint statement by the entire cast of the current Bachelor In the season that took place while the program was airing, women observed that the experiences of individuals at BIPOC should not be “explored or symbolized”.
Moving on, Lindsay recently placed the burden on competitors who continue to opt for the franchise to become those who demand responsibility and change. “I just don’t think things have been fixed in the right way and no one who is standing up for the change, I don’t see how you could be part of this season because, as we saw in [the March 9 episode], there is still a lot of work to be done, “she said recently about her University education podcast for The Ringer. “I don’t want my name to be affiliated [on the new season of The Bachelorette] and I heard that there are several people of color who left the show who were out of the cast this season. “
How diverse and representative the upcoming seasons will be is not yet known, as a great conversation around the program focused on the importance of screen time and representation. Despite boasting a cast of 25 BIPOC women in The bachelor, most of the current season was devoted to the drama surrounding white competitors, rather than showing various love stories.
The maiden is a production of Next Entertainment in association with Warner Horizon Unscripted Television. Fleiss, Martin Hilton, Nicole Woods, Bennett Graebner, Peter Gust, Tim Warner, Louis Caric and Peter Geist are executive producers.