ABC Exec Denies Claim That Clare Crawley Wasn’t Told About Matt James Being ‘Bachelor’
Reminder: Matt was originally cast as a contestant on Clare’s upcoming season of The Bachelorette.
Matt James was just cast as ABC’s first Black Bachelor, a history-making moment that comes on the heels of the franchise getting a lot of justifiable backlash for its lack of diversity both on the show and behind-the-scenes.
Matt was originally set to appear on Clare Crawley’s upcoming season of The Bachelorette, and a source (Clare, that you?) recently told Us Weekly that no one on the show told her he’d no longer be vying for her heart.
“Clare didn’t know about Matt becoming the Bachelor until GMA announcement,” the source claimed. “Decisions are still being made when it comes to her cast.”
Yeah, well, apparently, that’s not the case. ABC vice president of alternative programming Rob Mills told Ryan Seacrest that Clare was a hundred percent told about Matt’s casting before Good Morning America, saying, “Somebody said something to Us Weekly that she did not know, that she found out on GMA. Of course, we would never do that to Clare. She found out the day before.” He added, “Look. We wanted to keep this under wraps. We wanted to control the announcement and not have it leak, but Clare, of course, was told before that.”
As a reminder, Clare inexplicably and rudely called out Matt for joining Cameo and giving interviews to magazines, even though he was literally just trying to raise money and promote his charity.
Awkward Clare drama aside, Bachelor producers have been considering Matt as a lead for months. “Matt has been on our radar since February, when producers first approached him to join Bachelor Nation, as part of Clare’s season,” ABC president Karey Burke said in a statement. “When filming couldn’t move forward as planned, we were given the benefit of time to get to know Matt and all agreed he would make a perfect Bachelor.”
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