BLOWING UP THE BACHELORETTE
Everything you need to know about Clare Crawley's brand new season
“I could not be more ready for this,” Clare Crawley told Chris Harrison last month when discussing her chance to look for love as the star of ABC's The Bachelorette.
While most Bachelorettes are plucked straight from a recent season of The Bachelor,
Crawley, a 39-year-old hairstylist from Sacramento, has had a more circuitous route to the spotlight. She debuted on Juan Pablo Galavis' Season 6 years ago, when she was the runner-up, and is known for telling him off in the finale. She has been on Seasons 1 and 2 of Bachelor in Paradise and was briefly engaged to a man she met on the 2018 season of Bachelor Winter Games.
Ahead of this week's second explosive episode, here's everything you need to know about Clare Crawley.
She’s the oldest Bachelorette yet
In 15 seasons of The Bachelorette, the lead's average age is 27, and the show has only twice featured a woman in her 30s. With age comes more life experience and self-confidence, Crawley posits.
“I have learned and taught myself how to create my own happiness, so I don't need a man for happiness,” she told former Bachelor contestant Olivia Caridi on her Mouthing Off podcast.
She has been through a lot, too: Her dad died of brain cancer when she was 23. On Galavis' season of The Bachelor, Crawley mentions a DVD her dad made for her future husband to watch. Her mother, Lilia, has Alzheimer's and dementia, leading to many tough days where Crawley has said she “wanted to just crumble.” In those moments, Crawley's sisters have lifted her up.
Her personal experience with loss and hardship has the potential to spark deep and meaningful conversations with contestants, because they're always expected to open up about their own brushes with tragedy or life not going as planned.
She’s open about what she wants — and doesn’t want
When Crawley got out of the limo to meet Galavis for the first time, she wore a fake belly (we're guessing it was a pillow) as a playful way of telling Galavis, a single father, that she was ready and eager to have children of her own. He seemed to find it charming.
However, as the season unfolded, Galavis seemed to be more interested in the physical aspect of their relationship than anything else — and Crawley wasn't having it. On one of their final fi l d dates, t th the couple l shared h d a romantic helicopter ride, and in a rare moment without cameras around, he said something about how they didn't know each other very well, Crawley later told producers, and “that he loved hooking up with me.”
Later, when Galavis told Crawley she wasn't his final pick, she let him have it, famously telling him that, after “what you just made me go through, I would never want my children having a father like you.”
Viewers a lr ea dyldkk now Crawley will not hold back if she senses someone is just there for their music career or to snap up Instagram sponsorships. In last week's premiere, Crawley sent home Tyler C. after he accused Yosef of being less than honest.
Past Bachelorettes love her for her honesty
Other Bachelorettes still refer to her dismissal of Galavis as incredibly empowering.
“She was my h hero when h she h stood up to Juan Pablo,” Kaitlyn Bristowe, Bachelorette from the 2015 season, said of that finale during a recent TV special highlighting Galavis' season.
“She reminds me of an edgy Disney princess,” Bristowe added, noting Crawley's firm yet hopeful nature.
“If she doesn't (find someone), I'll be her girlfriend, because I have a girl crush on her.”
DeAnna Pappas, star of the 2008 season of The Bachelorette, told Harrison she was “screaming for joy when Clare was announced to be the Bachelorette,” adding that “she is going to know exactly what she wants.”
Her season is unlike any other we’ve seen before
Sure, Harrison says that every season. But it's true: For starters, the filming of Crawley's season was delayed several months because of the pandemic, from March to July. And it looks a lot different. It didn't open at the Bachelor mansion in Agoura Hills, Calif., and there will be no domestic or international travel, Harrison told Entertainment Tonight last month.
Instead, the cast and crew cr created one big pandemic bu bubble at the La Quinta Resort in Palm Springs, Calif., and all of th the dates will take place there. W Which also means Crawley got to bring her dogs with her!
Many of The Bachelorette ha hallmarks will remain: The men st still arrived on Night 1 in limos, an and don't worry, the resort has do dozens of pools and hot tubs. Bu But what will hometowns be lik like? Will they be happening ov over Zoom? We have so many qu questions.
Crawley C might not be in the th spotlight the entire time
There have been many rumours ru about this season and very ve little in the way of official confirmation co from Harrison or ABC. When asked recently about ab the reports that this season se features two leading women wo — Crawley and Tayshia Adams, Ad one of the finalists on Colton Underwood's 2019 season se of The Bachelor — Harrison Ha would only say of Adams: Ad “She's not not the Bachelorette.”
Appearing last week on the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast with Rachel Lindsay and Becca Kufrin after the premiere, Crawley teased, “I've heard some of the rumours, and I'm like, let them spin around because there's so much that happens. People think that they know what's going on, (but they don't).”
“Let me be very clear here before any haters decide to get nasty in the comments — this isn't me pushing my agenda anymore. This is me expressing my personal opinion and support on my own account. Before anyone decides to get vocal about unfollowing me, just simply tap `unfollow' instead if you so choose.”— The Bachelorette's Becca Kufrin says she's voting for former Vice-President Joe Biden because “humanity depends on it.”