‘The Bachelorette’: Chris Harrison Had to Fight for Tayshia Adams to Be the Bachelorette
Clare Crawley has found love and moved on from The Bachelorette. After falling in love with Dale Moss pretty much the moment that he stepped out of the limo, Crawley didn’t have much reason to continue filming The Bachelorette. In order to keep the show going, production brought in Tayshia Adams to take over. But apparently, Adams wasn’t a shoo-in for the role.
Clare Crawley exits the show
When Moss walked out of the limo, Crawley was immediately attracted to him and called him her husband. As time went on, her feelings for Moss only grew. Eventually, Crawley began canceling dates with the other men to spend more time with Moss. It didn’t take long for the other men to notice and get fed up with Crawley’s behavior.
“The guys felt a little spurned that they’re going all in for Clare,” ABC executive Rob Mills told Variety. “They’ve left their jobs to be there, they’ve quarantined there, it’s insanely hot in Palm Springs, and they never really had a chance because Clare only had eyes for one guy. You just go with instinct at that point.”
By episode 3, it was clear that production needed a backup plan.
“At that point, the producers started discussing like, ‘What would happen if she wants to leave with Dale?’” Mills said. “And that’s when the producers thought that maybe we should reach out to Tayshia.”
Chris Harrison fought for Tayshia
Though Tayshia Adams has been on two Bachelor shows, The Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise, she wasn’t production’s first pick for the lead role. She had, however, been on the shortlist for this season so when the opportunity to have her move into the lead position arose, host Chris Harrison jumped at it.
“Tayshia is just someone who I wanted to be the Bachelorette,” Harrison told Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti Haibon on the The Ben and Ashley I. Almost Famous Podcast. “I fought for her, I wanted her to be on our list, and she was. As soon as we had a chance to have another one, I was so excited when we all decided that she was it.
“We really wanted it to be Tayshia and I’m glad that she came in,” he continued.
After seeing Adams go on Colton Underwood’s season of The Bachelor and BIP and come up empty-handed, Harrison wanted her to find love.
“I’ve gotten to know her for a couple of years now and I absolutely adore her,” he said. “I think she’s a fantastic woman, obviously stunningly beautiful, but she is so kind, giving and just sweet and down to earth. She just has such a balance about her and this great energy. She’s the type of person you want to be around.”
Tayshia Adams’ transition on ‘The Bachelorette’
No matter how great Adams was for the role, getting the men to just completely switch gears and fight for her when they were just competing for Crawley was a huge task for production.
“I just know that this process moves very quickly and you start to invest a lot of feelings really early on,” Adams said when she first came on the show. “I don’t know if that’s the case for some of them, and if so, I am more than happy to have that conversation with them if they don’t feel like this is the right time for them or I’m not right for them.”
Adams’ journey to find love begins tonight at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
