Chris Harrison says that he and the rest of the team at the Bachelor is making a real effort to promote inclusion and diversity across the franchise. He spoke with ET about the changes they are enacting.
“Change… never happens fast enough. It does take a long time to turn around a big ship, and this is a big ship. But the strides we made are now baring fruit,” Harrison said. Step one was recognizing “there was an issue in the first place,” he noted.
In June, producers acknowledged that there was “lack of representation of people of color,” and promised to make change. Their first step was in casting their first Black Bachelor, Matt James.
Clare Crawley, whose season of The Bachelorette bows October 13th, is part Mexican, and about one-third of the contestants are men of color.
“Obviously we've made strides this summer with Matt James, and you will see for yourself with night one on Clare Crawley's season the strides that we have taken to make the entire cast more diverse, so everybody can see themselves represented and everybody can see their love represented,” Harrison said.
Also, although ABC hasn’t confirmed this, Crawley exited the season early after falling for a contestant, and was replaced by Tayshia Adams, the second Black Bachelorette in history, after Rachel Lindsay.