*Former “Bachelorette” Rachel Lindsay is breaking her silence about her experience with the “Bachelor” franchise, and her truth comes four months after officially ending her contract with ABC.
Lindsay opened up about feeling “exploited” in an op-ed for New York Magazine. She also touches on her conversation about race with former host Chris Harrison. Lindsay said the moment caused the Bachelor fandom that “had always had a complicated relationship with” her to further “turn against” her.
“The franchise has spent 19 years cultivating a toxic audience. They have constantly given it a product it wants: a midwestern/southern white, blonde, light-eyed Christian. Not all viewers are like that,” she wrote in the piece, published Monday. “My Higher Learning co-host and I have divided it – there is a Bachelor Nation, and there is a Bachelor Klan.”
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Lindsay explained the term, “Bachelor Klan” refers to the “hateful, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and homophobic” fans of the franchise. “They are afraid of change. They are afraid to be uncomfortable. They are afraid when they get called out,” she wrote.
Elsewhere in the op-ed, Lindsay recounts moments when the producers had her back.
“There were moments like that when they protected me,” she said of the producers. “Another time, I’d had two mixed drinks, and I was out-of-my-mind wasted. Astrid [Loch] was holding my hair back in the bathroom. (I drunkenly told her, ‘You are my only real friend.’) They could have brought cameras in there. They didn’t.”
“I sat in the ceremony that day as Nick gave out roses, my head resting on Astrid’s shoulder,” Lindsay recalled. “My hair was disheveled. I wasn’t always like that, but all it takes is one mess-up. They could have taken those clips and depicted me as a wild Jezebel. They didn’t because I would never come out on top.”
After the op-ed was published, Lindsay took to Instagram to slam the outlet for misrepresenting her with the headline they chose to accompany her essay. The headline reads: “Oops, I Blew Up The Bachelor.”)
“It is very disappointing and disrespectful that the very notion I was trying to refute was used against me by the publication for a clickbait headline,” Lindsay posted. “My truth and my thoughts are told on the inside of the magazine which I am very proud of and hope you all read.”
You can read Rachel’s full op-ed here.
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