A second love story? New Bachelorette Tayshia Adams is beginning her journey to find love on season 16 after Clare Crawley’s exit with contestant Dale Moss. Go for gold in your Bachelor fantasy league by filling out a bracket for Tayshia and her guys. Save and bring the bracket below to get the party started!
Season 16 is unlike any other thanks to the midseason swap out. Life & Style exclusively broke the news on July 30 that Clare, 39, wanted to “quit” the show because she had already “fallen in love” with Dale, 32, just 12 days into filming. Days later, talk among production was that the former football player proposed to Clare, and they are currently engaged. Life & Style confirmed shortly after that Tayshia, 30, was stepping in to replace Clare.
The Sacramento native received backlash for her strong bond with Dale because it made fans (and her other contestants) believe that it took away from her connecting with the other men. Like all other past leads and contestants, Clare’s lips are sealed because she is under contract with ABC, which means she’s extremely limited in what she is publicly allowed to talk about when it comes to the show. However, she’s been letting her “likes” on Twitter express how she really feels.
The hairstylist gave a thumbs up to a series of tweets on October 24 that said she was being given a “bad edit” by the reality dating show and that production was trying to “force her out.” She also “liked” a tweet that said, “There’s no drama, and the drama that they’ve shown has been dramatized and fixated to make Clare look a certain type of way.”
Host Chris Harrison seemingly contradicted that idea during an interview with Entertainment Tonight on October 28. “I would just say she has complete control,” the ABC personality said. “This season of The Bachelorette was completely about Clare. It’s all about Clare, and she will decide where we go from here. It’s totally, completely up to her.”
ABC executive Rob Mills had a similar sentiment about the season. “As the lead, you have moments where you’re like, ‘I’m done, I’m out. [But production never thought], ‘Oh my God, what if they’ve met this person [early on] and we’ve got to shut this whole thing down,’” he explained on Nick Viall’s “The Viall Files” podcast on October 27. “When she didn’t give out that rose and she just gave it to herself [during week 3’s group date], that was it. That was really it, when we started making the call [to replace her].”
Good luck, Tayshia!