A new book dishing the dirt on TV’s most notorious ‘romance’ franchise exposes the gruelling and invasive process auditionees have to endure to get to that first red carpet meeting.
Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure, written by Amy Kaufman, says hopefuls are grilled by a private investigator on their relationship history, mental health history, and any X-rated skeletons in their closet.
Then they’re given a full medical examination, including a blood and urine test to detect drugs and STIs. Which is apparently where most of the problems begin, according to Ben Hatta, a former assistant to US Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss.
“As soon as the medical tests came back, you’d see that herpes was the biggest thing.
“And sometimes you’d be the first person to tell a contestant that they had herpes. You’d be like, ‘Uh, you should call your doctor.’ Why? ‘We’re not going to be able to have you on our show, but you should call your doctor.’
“Then they’d realise they’d been denied from The Bachelor and now a bunch of people knew they had herpes.”
Speaking at the Banff World Media Festival in 2012, Fleiss himself admitted that many great candidates fall through the cracks after the psychological testing:
“We’re really careful about who we let on the show.
“We lose a lot of great potential characters because we’re so tough and stringent … Anyone who has any sort of borderline personality disorder or instability or any sort of past involving contemplation of suicide — we just can’t take the risk. We just don’t.”
Bachie producer Michael Carroll said the psych testing wasn’t so black and white, however.
“There’s psychological tests they have to pass, but there’s a window of the pass, do you know what I mean?” “You’d know there’d be a possibility of [someone] being kind of unhinged — like, she passed, but just barely. You can see it at the casting events during the interviews: ‘Oh, this chick is going to go f**king nuts. She’s amazing.’
“You get the feeling of who pops on TV and who’s coming unhinged and who’s gonna go for it.”
Ex-US Bachelor contestant Rozlyn Papa was kicked off her season, and blasted the screening process for exploiting the mentally ill:
“If they were really trying to protect you, you’d think that would be sort of a red flag and they would say, ‘Well, maybe this is someone who can’t handle this kind of pressure.
“But instead, it was almost like, ‘OK, perfect. You’re perfect for the show. You’re going to cry. You’re going to say some really screwed-up stuff.’ Looking at it, I can see why I should not have been a candidate.”
Read the full excerpt from Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure at the New York Post.
