Rachel Lindsay is ready for change. The former Bachelorette has never been afraid to speak up about her issues with the Bachelor franchise.
The attorney first appeared on Nick Viall’s season of The Bachelor in 2017. While she scored the first impression rose and made it to the final three, Viall ultimately picked Vanessa Grimaldi over runner-up Raven Gates. (Viall and Grimaldi split less than a year after the finale aired.)
Lindsay went on to be named the first African American lead as the season 13 Bachelorette. While she found love with now-husband Bryan Abasolo, Lindsay was upset with the way the franchise portrayed their love story as the focus was on her popular runner-up Peter Kraus.
“The Bachelor franchise does believe in happy endings — some people get an on-camera happy ending, some people get on off-camera happy ending, and some people get both,” she wrote in her Bachelorette season 14 finale blog for Us Weekly. “As for my happy ending, it was not demonstrated within the confines of your television screens, but I am living it every day in real life.”
Lindsay made headlines again in 2019 when Peter Weber was named the Bachelor over Mike Johnson, whom many fans had campaigned to become the first black Bachelor. She also criticized the show for not reflecting real life.
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“I honestly don’t know how much longer the show can survive in this day and age, just to be honest, because social media spoils so many things,”Lindsay told the Associated Press in March 2020. “So many people come on, no job, no career, never worked a day in their life because they’re going to build it off of being Instagram famous or any other type of social media that you want to insert in there. I think it’s going to be harder for them to find relationships that work. … The show is either going to have to change or it’s gonna end.”
Scroll through for more of Rachel’s commentary on the franchise:
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