‘The Bachelorette’: Chris Harrison Says No Other Lead Has Fallen for Their Final Pick as Early as Clare Crawley–Is He Right?
By now it’s common knowledge that Clare Crawley’s chapter of The Bachelorette is coming to a close and Tayshia Adams is about to step in. After 12 days, Crawley is saying goodbye to all her other contestants to focus on the one and only man she wants: Dale Moss.
In a recent interview, host Chris Harrison said no other lead has fallen for their final pick as quickly as Crawley did. But is that the full story?
Chris Harrison’s comments about Clare Crawley ending her season of ‘The Bachelorette’ early
Harrison was interviewed by Entertainment Tonight after Crawley “liked” a Twitter thread that suggested she was “force[d] out” by production. His response to that was that it was completely Crawley’s choice to leave.
He also touched on how quickly Crawley was set on Moss.
“The first night, I went in more of just to capture that moment and lean into that moment,'” he said of his reaction to Crawley’s statement about just meeting her husband after Moss’ entrance. “I kinda thought, ‘This’ll be good because we won’t be going in this direction in just another week or two, and this’ll be interesting that she was falling so hard for this guy and felt so strong, yet here we are on this other path.’ That tends to be what happens.”
“That’s not what’s happening here, and that was just the tip of the iceberg, and it’s only gone more severe in that direction,” he continued. “So, I go back to that and I wanna go, ‘Wow, OK, maybe she was onto something and maybe she really did feel that strongly.'”
The host went on to say that he had “never seen a lead fall that hard that heavy on Night One.”
“I’ve had leads say, ‘Wow, I’m really blown away. I really like that person,’ and end up with that person in the end, but it was not a just out and out, ‘Let’s just stop this right now’-type of a feeling,” he explained.
Other examples of bachelorettes falling for contestants hard and fast
In an interview with former bachelor Nick Viall on The Viall Files, ABC Exec. Robert Mills said it’s not totally uncommon for leads to consider ending their time early. But it’s never been as serious as Crawley’s situation.
“As the lead, you have moments where you’re like, ‘I’m done, I’m out,’” he told Viall, who agreed. “[But production never thought], ‘Oh my God, what if they’ve met this person [early on] and we’ve got to shut this whole thing down.’”
Mills also brought up other instances of bachelorettes falling for their favorites early. Andi Dorfman’s connection with Josh Murray and JoJo Fletcher’s connection with Jordan Rodgers are both notable.
“No offense to you Nick, but I think Andi’s season that was a little bit of a problem. … It was really always going to be Josh,” said Mills. “JoJo will be on later in the season, she’s going to be filling in for [Chris] Harrison and she talks a little bit about it too. … That was the big worry at this point [that] it was just going to be Dale from episode 1 to episode 10.”
Hannah Brown has also said that it was love at first sight with controversial contestant Luke P.
Clare Crawley is the only bachelorette to end her season early
Dorfman, Fletcher, and Brown probably made comments about their front runners early on, too. Comments like “Can we wrap this up early?” re a cocktail party, or mentioning that they wished they were on a one-on-one with someone else. But we didn’t hear any of those sound bites because we typically don’t learn how leads really feel until the end of their seasons.
In the Twitter thread that Harrison responded to in his interview with ET, it was suggested that Crawley was “force[d] out.” Because Crawley liked the tweet, many fans are surmising she agrees.
While Harrison insists that Crawley left La Quinta all on her own, it’s interesting that in all these years of The Bachelor, no lead has ever done this before.
“I think they were trying to force her out on some real. It was reported that she quit 12 days after filming and she locked herself in her room and wouldn’t come out, which was hard to believe considering how bad she wanted it,” reads the Twitter thread, as reported by ET. “And I really feel like they are giving her a bad edit( just my opinion). They are feeding into the narrative and the rumors and making it seem like it was Clare’s decision that this ended and i feel like that’s not the case.”
We’ll just have to wait and see what the conversation between Crawley and Harrison sounds like when the Sacramento native decides to leave. Did Crawley really “blow up The Bachelorette?” Or was a stick of dynamite taped to her back courtesy of production.
