‘The Bachelor’ Contestant Says the Series Was Staged and Top 10 Were Predetermined During the Nick Viall Season

Lacey Mark, from 'The Bachelor' says she originally wanted to quit, but producers asked her to stay to be eliminated on TV.

by Gina Ragusa

Published on February 8, 2021

2 min read

Lacey Mark said she wanted to quit, so she was eliminated

Mark insisted she wasn’t interested in Bachelor Nick Viall. She was ready to pack her bags and go home. But producers had other plans.

“The night of the cocktail party that I got sent home, I was like I’m not interested in Nick,” Mark said on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast. “And if I’m not interested in Nick like I’m not trying to be an influencer. I don’t want to be here.”

“So I pulled on the producers aside. I was like, can I go home?” she recalled. “I was like, I don’t really like Nick. I don’t think Nick really likes me. Like, I’m starting to see some house girl politics form. And I don’t want to be a part of it. Like, can I just go home?”

Mark said producers told her she was getting eliminated that night. And said they’d like to include the elimination in their footage. She recalled producers telling her, “‘Can you just stay so we can see when you get eliminated instead of having to create a whole other storyline of you quitting?’ I was like, ‘Yes, that’s fine.’ So I stayed for the rose ceremony where I got eliminated.”

‘The Bachelor’ rose ceremony is a setup, Lacey Mark insists

Mark said producers also wanted her to cry in her exit interview. “I was like, it’s not going to happen,” she said. “And I was like, I really don’t care that I’m leaving right now.”

She also said a good portion of the show has been “Frankensteined together.” Plus, she believes the top 10 contestants are already set. “I’m sure like there’s all these rumors floating around that the top 10 is predetermined before they even finished casting and things like that,” she remarked. “Which I would believe a hundred percent, especially based on seeing like how the producers work behind the scenes when you’re actually there.”

“So of course, Nick’s season Alexis Waters slept through an entire day, an entire cocktail party, and just like woke up for the rose ceremony and got a rose … like it’s predetermined,” she said.

Mark reiterated that what happens on the show is very different than what viewers end up seeing. “I felt on my season, which was it’s predetermined and I imagined that happens on every season and everybody just feels it a little differently,” she observed. “‘Cause the way it’s shown too is like, that’s not the order the roses are given. It’s all edited and chopped up.”