OLD-FASHIONED ROMANCE
The star of The Bachelorette Canada talks to the Star about what it was like to date multiple guys at once,
When you think about the concept of a woman dating up to 20 men at one time for a reality TV show, the first phrase that comes to mind isn’t “oldfashioned.”
Yet those are the words that Jasmine Lorimer, the 27-year-old star of The Bachelorette Canada, uses when explaining why she agreed to live out two months of her love life on TV.
“The appealing thing about this is you do get a lot of face-to-face time and you’re taking away the phones, and you’re taking away the texting and all those things that can be said over text or misconstrued, and all of your interactions and all of the development of your relationships happens one on one,” she says as we sit face to face across a meeting room table.
“Although it seems strange to do it on reality TV, it’s also kind of oldfashioned in a weird way . . . If it wasn’t televised, I mean, aside from all the extravagant dates that happen that you probably wouldn’t be going on, but just the actual quality time on dates, it’s a very normal feeling.”
The country gets to judge for itself when The Bachelorette Canada debuts on W Network Tuesday at 9 p.m. It’s the maiden Canadian journey of this spinoff of the U.S. Bachelor franchise featuring a woman seeking a mate by dating multiple men. Canada had two seasons of The Bachelor, in 2012 and 2014 on City TV.
Lorimer hadn’t watched the U.S. version for quite a while when she got offered the gig, so she did some catching up. What she came away with was a determination to be herself on TV and not be “blah.”
But why look for a husband on a show in the first place?
The hairstylist and part-time model had just moved to the small town of Pemberton, B.C., from Vancouver (she’s originally from Kenora, Ont.) — not exactly a singles haven — and wasn’t sure how to meet someone to