Bachelor Nation

by Amy Kaufman

  As for the psychological testing, Fleiss likes to say that the Bach has some of the most thorough background checks in the business—a lesson he learned after that whole Rick Rockwell fiasco.

  “We’re really careful about who we let on the show,” he said at the Banff World Media Festival in 2012. “We lose a lot of great potential characters because we’re so tough and stringent. . . . Anyone who has any sort of borderline personality disorder or instability or any sort of past involving contemplation of suicide—we just can’t take the risk. We just don’t.”

  But according to numerous producers who have worked on The Bachelor, the rules aren’t always that strict.

  “There’s psychological tests they have to pass, but there’s a window of the pass, do you know what I mean?” insinuated Michael Carroll, the producer who got so close to contestants that he even crashed in their rooms occasionally. “You’d know there’d be a possibility of [someone] being kind of unhinged—like, she passed, but just barely. You can see it at the casting events during the interviews: ‘Oh, this chick is going to go fucking nuts. She’s amazing.’”

  I asked him to describe the kind of behavior he was talking about. Say, for example, Carroll told a woman to describe her first love. You don’t want the girl who says her first boyfriend played lacrosse and went to Harvard. You want the girl who dated a guy who rode a motorcycle and was the bane of her parents’ existence. “You want the girl who’s like, ‘Oh, he was super cool and we would go fuck in his parents’ pool,’” Carroll explained. “You get the feeling of who pops on TV and who’s coming unhinged and who’s gonna go for it.”

  Rozlyn Papa, an infamous Bachelor villain, recalled her session with Dr. Selden being particularly troubling. The psychologist asked Papa if she’d ever struggled with mental illness, and the single mother was candid about her battle with depression. Even though she wasn’t feeling low at the time, she was honest about the fact that depression was an ongoing issue in her life.

  “If they were really trying to protect you, you’d think that would be sort of a red flag and they would say, ‘Well, maybe this is someone who can’t handle this kind of pressure,’” said Papa, who ended up getting kicked off Jake Pavelka’s season in 2010; much more on that later. “But instead, it was almost like, ‘OK, perfect. You’re perfect for the show. You’re going to cry. You’re going to say some really screwed-up stuff.’ Looking at it, I can see why I should not have been a candidate.”

  Frankly, I think you have to be slightly insane to agree to the contract the show makes contestants sign. I’ve looked at contracts from a few different seasons of the show—the one I’m quoting from here is from 2015—and they barely change from year to year, save for some updates about social media policies. So let’s take a walk through the ironclad twenty-seven-page document, shall we?

  OK, first off—and this probably seems obvious—you must agree to be filmed up to twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But this may also be “by means of hidden cameras and microphones,” according to the contract—meaning you’re likely going to be caught, at some point, in a less-than-positive light. You should have “no expectation of privacy.”

  Furthermore, because this is a reality show, you must acknowledge that “elements of surprise” will be included. You must be “prepared for anything,” including “twists” and “surprises.” “Producer or others connected to the show,” the contract reads, “may intentionally or unintentionally make misrepresentations or omissions concerning the Series.” Basically: The producers can mislead you, and that’s totally kosher.

  Here’s where we get to an especially important clause, because it’s in all-caps:

  I UNDERSTAND, ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT PRODUCER MAY USE OR REVEAL PERSONAL INFORMATION WHICH MAY BE EMBARRASSING, UNFAVORABLE, SHOCKING, HUMILIATING, DISPARAGING, AND/OR DEROGATORY, MAY SUBJECT ME TO PUBLIC RIDICULE AND/OR CONDEMNATION, AND MAY PORTRAY ME IN A FALSE LIGHT.

  In other words: If you get drunk, naked, or just downright bitchy, come off looking terrible, and then lose all your friends and your job? That’s on you, babe. Even worse, anything embarrassing that you do on the show—whether you were “clothed, partially clothed, or naked” or “aware or unaware” of being filmed—is owned by the franchise forever.

  And you’ll probably act a little differently from how you would in your day-to-day life, because you’re going to be “separated from [your] family, friends, and [your] regular environment in Los Angeles” until production is finished. Those conditions may expose you to “severe mental stress,” and you cannot seek “refuge” anywhere cameras aren’t allowed. But if you suffer “emotional and mental distress” as a result of your portrayal on the show, the competition, or the isolation—just remember, you signed off on that.

  During production, you might have to engage in “strenuous physical activity” on dates: “hiking, wading, swimming, diving, parasailing, water skiing, other water sports or activities, skydiving, snow skiing, ice-skating, roller blading, and other physical activities yet to be determined.” You may have to be a passenger in a watercraft, land vehicle, helicopter, or small plane.

  Even though everyone on the show is advised to “refrain from all forms of violence and intimidation,” you might be in “close physical proximity” to contestants who could exhibit “physical or verbal aggression.” And if you go on the show, you have to be single. You can’t be married. You can’t be living with someone with whom you have “physical intimacy.” You can’t even date someone exclusively for more than two months. Once production begins, if you have sex with someone, you need to be aware that you’re risking contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

  In the year following the finale of your season, you must be available to take part in a “reasonable number” of interviews, photo shoots, and chats for publicity. You also have to agree to take part in any special episodes of the show—like “After the Final Rose” or other reunions—for three years.

  And if you make it to the end of the Bach and decide to get married within the two years following the show, the producers own the exclusive rights to your wedding. If they exercise those rights, they’re only going to pay you $10,000 per hour of televised programming about your union. As for the ring given to you by Neil Lane? You don’t own it—and therefore can’t sell it—for two years.

  Given all these guidelines, the question remains: Why would anyone agree to go on this damn show? Don’t the risks very obviously outweigh the benefits?

  There are plenty of former contestants I spoke to who admitted, outright, that they simply didn’t read the contract. They wanted to be on TV and figured, “What the hell? How bad could things get?” Others, like Rozlyn Papa, scrutinized the document.

  “I read over every word of that contract,” she acknowledged. “I spoke about it with my family. We talked about what the repercussions could be and how they may twist things or edit things. But the advice of my family was: ‘Just don’t give them anything that you wouldn’t want to be seen by millions of viewers. As long as you are yourself and you stay away from drama and you don’t drink a lot and you don’t call anybody names and you respect the other people, then they’re not going to have anything bad to show or to say about you.’ It’s not that I was unaware of the potential ramifications, I just thought that it wouldn’t apply to me.”

  When I’d ask people who have been on the Bach about why they wanted to go on the show, I’d usually get some sort of roundabout answer. “It all started as a joke! My friend submitted me! It’s a free vacation! A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!”

  Rarely, it seemed, were past contestants honest about what drew them to be on a reality show—likely because that would mean admitting to being unhappy with the monotony of their off-screen lives.

  “Think about it,” reasoned Papa. “The majority of girls on that show either don’t have a job, or they have a job where they can leave for six weeks. You
’re looking at women who aren’t really in a solid place in life, and probably have issues with identity or love or self-esteem.”

  She makes a good point. Why apply to go on a reality show if your life is going swimmingly? Even if you’re a Real Housewife, a Kardashian, or Tori Spelling, there’s something greater at stake—building a brand, getting more followers on Instagram, paying the mortgage.

  Being told that you’re beautiful and interesting enough to star on television by a reality-show producer? That’s a pretty powerful form of validation.

  In her 2012 memoir, Melissa Rycroft—yes, the one who was proposed to by Jason Mesnick on The Bachelor only to be dumped months later on “After the Final Rose”—admitted outright that she wasn’t in a positive mental space when she was cast. She’d just broken up with a boyfriend, and though she was emotionally distraught, she thought The Bachelor would give her a fresh start.

  “Even though I was still a mess inside, there was something about pretending to be put together that started to make me feel like I was that powerful woman I wanted to be, and that made it all easier,” Rycroft wrote in her book, My Reality. “I wasn’t actually going on the show to look for love. I was simply going to move on with my life and find a new, happy place inside of myself. I needed to rediscover me.”

  For others, the show provides an opportunity to get out of dead-end jobs. Desiree Siegfried—who was Desiree Hartsock before she became the Bachelorette in 2013—was working as a consultant at a Beverly Hills bridal salon before she went on TV. That may sound like a glamorous gig, but Siegfried said she was actually living paycheck-to-paycheck, just hoping she’d one day be able to save enough to start her own wedding-dress design company. She was so broke that all she did was work and work out. She felt like she was barely getting by in L.A., but even her ticket out of her day job—a spot on Sean Lowe’s season of The Bachelor—was worrisome.

  “Quitting my job was a huge risk,” she acknowledged. “And then even paying rent and the bills while I was gone. I didn’t have it.”

  Siegfried took the gamble, but as she made it further along on Lowe’s season, she was forced to open up about her money troubles to producers.

  “About rent time, I said, ‘I won’t be able to continue unless you pay my rent,’” she said. “But I was so modest. I should have said, ‘Could you pay for my bills too?’ I felt so bad. So when I got off, I know I was backed up with all my bills.”

  And what about the rarer applicant who actually loves their job? Obviously, not every boss is cool with an employee taking an unspecified amount of time off work—especially if that employee’s reputation takes a hit during their hiatus.

  Harming his image was a major concern for Michael Garofola, who had a prestigious job as a federal prosecutor in Miami when he was cast on Siegfried’s season of The Bachelorette. He knew there was no way he’d quit his job to go on the show and thought it was highly unlikely that the US Department of Justice would grant him permission for a leave of absence.

  “So I go up to meet with the US Attorney, and I was really surprised by how well he took it,” recalled Garofola. “He was like, ‘Well, of course they would want you. You’re a great guy and you’re a very good catch.’”

  Still, Garofola’s request had to go through the ethics committee, but ultimately, he received a letter signed by then attorney general Eric Holder saying he could embark on “non-legal, non-paid, outside activity” for eight weeks.

  “There were a few people who were against it,” Garofola remembered. “But to be honest with you, my sense is that the people who were against it were a little envious. I had a great position as a lawyer and was still able to go have some fun and travel and have this unique experience.”

  Nick Viall—who, yes, actually did have a real job before becoming a lifetime reality TV star—didn’t have to jump through as many hoops to get off work. But when he was nominated by a friend to participate on the 2014 season of The Bachelorette, he still wasn’t sure it would be beneficial to his career. At the time, he was thirty-three and had just been promoted to account executive at the cloud computing company Salesforce. He didn’t want to quit, but everyone in his life thought he should go on the show.

  “I kind of became frustrated with my friends,” he acknowledged. “I really wanted honest advice. But I equated it to buying a boat. If you go to your friend and are like, ‘I’m thinking of buying a boat,’ they’re going to say, ‘You should totally buy a boat. That’s an amazing fucking idea.’ But boats are a really bad investment. They’re a lot of fun, but a lot of work. So everyone just wanted to go on my boat—see me go on TV.”

  Still, Salesforce was encouraging—promising he could return to the company after he vied for Andi Dorfman’s heart. Of course, they had no way of knowing then that he’d end up going on three more nationally televised Bach journeys. Viall did return to Salesforce for a brief moment, but he eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue a modeling career and do more reality television.

  Yes, that’s right: After his first stint on The Bachelorette with Dorfman, he returned to the show as a surprise mid-season guest in 2015, when Kaitlyn Bristowe was the lady of the hour. As it turned out, Viall had slid into Bristowe’s DMs during the off-season, and when she became the Bachelorette, he decided to go on the show to try to date her. He ended up as the runner-up, once again, so then he headed to Bachelor in Paradise, the summer franchise spin-off where contestants from various seasons fly to Mexico to drink tequila on the beach and hook up. His turn on Paradise was such a hit with viewers that ABC decided to make an unconventional choice, casting him as the Bachelor in 2016. As a result, he finally got engaged—his fiancée was a beautiful special education teacher from Canada, Vanessa Grimaldi. The couple spent their first months together in public on yet another highly visible stage: Immediately after The Bachelor went off the air, Viall joined the cast of Dancing with the Stars. Not long after that reality show stint, he and Grimaldi broke up.

  Keep in mind that when I interviewed Viall for this book in late 2015, he told me he thought his time “finding love on TV” was done.

  “I’m Nick from The Bachelorette, and I get that,” he said at the time. “But I don’t want to be recognized for that. I don’t want it to be what I’m known for. I’d rather people be like, ‘Why do you have so many followers?’”

  In that same breath, though, he acknowledged that he got a rush from being recognized. Sometimes, he said, he’d walk into bars and catch himself looking to see if anyone noticed him.

  “And you’re like, ‘What am I doing?’ I try to tell myself this isn’t going to last. I’m aware of how forgettable we all are.”

  He may be aware of that fact, but he seems to be doing his darnedest to fight it.

  Why I’m a Fan

  HEIDI AND SPENCER PRATT

  Spencer: We basically only watch reality TV. The Chrisleys, Love & Hip Hop, all the Real Housewives, the Kardashians, Total Divas, WAGS, Dance Moms. And Bachelor is our only broadcast show, because it’s pretty much a cable show on ABC.

  Heidi falls in love with the love story, and I’m more about what they’re all doing for the camera. I know what’s up—they’re on the show to get IG followers and #SponCon ads. But the reality is, I went on a TV show just for fame and now I’m married with a kid, so the game is crazy.

  Our reoccurring game we play is figuring out what line was re-said in a testimonial that a producer created. Did you really say that, or was that purely for story? There’s alcohol involved, so you’re pumped up, and the producers are saying, “That was so good, you’re so funny. Oh my gosh, people are gonna love you!”

  And then there’s editing. I have been on multiple phone calls on reality shows where I was talking to one person and they use the footage to make it look like I was talking to somebody else. They bait you in. It’s totally a mind game. You’re tired, the lights are bright. On Big Brother, you’d be in be
d completely asleep at three a.m. and they’d call you to the diary room. You will say whatever gets you back into bed because they’ll drag it out.

  Heidi: With scripted, everything is so regimented and planned out and every character acts a certain way. But with reality TV, you get to see how people really are, which is way more entertaining. Maybe people approve of it less, but it’s also more realistic and human.

  Spencer: And like scripted is so much better? On Game of Thrones, people are getting their heads chopped off and being burned alive and it’s like, that’s what 20 million people should watch? People being brutally murdered by dragons? That’s chill? I would much rather Corinne getting blacked out for America and love than watching people getting murdered for an hour straight. Every hit show isn’t a hit show because it’s so wholesome and you’re learning how to be a better human. People just love hating on other people who get famous for doing nothing. Viewers know people are getting paid and having fun and going to parties.

  I used to live-tweet during The Bachelor, and I loved it, until it became an unsafe environment. All I did was like a fellow Bachelor fan’s tweet and she said she wanted to kill herself. It was Anna Kendrick. She wrote something like: “@SpencerPratt just favorited my tweet, looks like I now need to go kill myself.”

  —Heidi and Spencer Pratt, reality television stars (The Hills, Celebrity Big Brother, Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars)

  CHAPTER 5

  Drafting a Game Plan

  At this point, you’re probably wondering: Is anyone here for the right reasons? Does anyone actually go on the Bach hoping to find their soul mate?