Each season of “The Bachelor” is dramatic, but usually it’s the contestants fighting amongst themselves. That’s what makes the newest season unique as main man Clayton Echard is facing a whole new challenge: Multiple women aren’t interested in him.
The first episode aired Monday and showed two women drop out of the contest. First, contestant Salley Carson shared that she had previously been engaged and wasn’t sure if she was emotionally ready to seek a new relationship. To make matters worse, “The Bachelor” filming dates happened to coincide with her canceled wedding.
“It was supposed to be my wedding day,” Salley said, according to Yahoo News. “I didn’t know it’d be so hard to be here today. Like, I just want to be with my family. The reality of it is, ever since I’ve been here, I’ve been an emotional wreck, and it sucks. Like, I want to be excited. I’m sure all the girls here are excited. But it’s hard to get in that mindset of like, hey, I can do this. So I need to talk to Clayton, and that’s scary because he doesn’t know I’m coming.”
Clayton accepted Salley’s admission and said he was still interested in keeping her around. The “Bachelor” star even offered to give the former fiancee the first rose of the season to help convince her to stay.
But that move would become Clayton’s first rejection of the evening. Ultimately, Salley decided to quit her quest for the football star’s heart before it even began. She said, “Here’s the thing. I know we both felt that connection. And I really like you. I want to accept that rose. But my heart is just not in the place where I can. And I feel so bad about that. My heart’s just not ready. I’m so sorry.”
Next, the “Bachelor” star admitted that he didn’t handle rejection well.
“That was tough,” he said. “The first rose that I have given out as the Bachelor was rejected. One of my biggest fears is being rejected, and it’s important for me to understand that love is a two-way street. Even though I’m the Bachelor, I still have to win the hearts over of these women. I’m just hoping that what I give I can receive back. So I’m scared that this is how it’s gonna be. This is not the way that I was hoping to start my journey to find love.”
The hits kept coming for Clayton as the night went on. Next, contestant Claire Heilig decided to leave when she realized the leading man was a bit too nice for her.
“It was a catastrophe,” Claire explained during the interview. “I beat his a** in cornhole and then the girl walked up and was like, ‘Hey can I steal you?’ And I was like, ‘Go. He sucks.’”
She continued, “I can’t be with, like, America’s sweetheart. I hated him.”
And they aren’t the only ones who took issue with Clayton. Many Bachelor Nation fans were disappointed that producers picked him as the next Bachelor rather than making the show more diverse, which they’d been striving toward in previous seasons.
“There have been these moments of relief and surprise that made it seem like things were really going to change for the better,” Bachelor Nation fan Myah Genung told the LA Times after learning they’d picked a white man and not a black man. “But that has been immediately followed by disappointment and a reversal to the status quo, where there are glaring signs that they’re privileging white men.”
With record low viewership numbers on the last season of “The Bachelorette,” it would make sense for producers to ramp up the drama and inspire more fans to tune in. That could lead to more rejection for Clayton, especially now that he admitted how difficult it is for him.
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Source: Dailywire
