Questions of Authenticity
Mike Fleiss, creator of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, as well as former contestants, have come forth confessing that both shows are scripted. The Bachelorette Season 4 winner, Jesse Csincsak, admits that contestants must follow producers' orders and that a storyline is fabricated in the editing room.
In an exclusive interview on February 26, 2009 between The Bachelor Season 13 contestant Megan Parris, and Steve Carbone, Megan explains how the producers edit the footage to create a fake storyline. "I don't think showed any real conversation I had with anyone... The viewers fail to realize that editing is what makes the show... You'll hear someone make one comment and then they'll show a clip of somebody's face to make it look like that is their facial reaction to that statement, but really, somebody made that face the day before to something else. It's just piecing things together to make a story."
Megan Parris confesses that not only is the show scripted, but that producers "bully" contestants into saying specific things to the camera that the contestants do not want to say. "'There's nothing real about it,' she said of the show's trademark "confessionals," in which contestants talk to the camera about the latest goings-on. "It is scripted," she said. "They basically will call you names, berate you, curse at you until they get you to say what they want you to say." Both ABC and Warner Bros., the studio that produces The Bachelor, had no comment."
On March 15, 2010 The Bachelorette creator Mike Fleiss appeared on 20/20 to confess that he develops the show's contestants into characters that will cater to his audience's tastes and that they "need fair share of villains every season." Fleiss has come under fire for admitting that The Bachelor has less to do with reality than it does making good television.
By Season 7 of The Bachelorette, actors were being hired by ABC to play specific roles on the show. Many fans were becoming tired of the show's scripted nature and speaking out. By Season 8 there were numerous complaints when the entire cast of The Bachelorette overtly acted out the show's written script with the cast of The Muppets.
On February 24, 2012, during the filming of The Women Tell All episode of The Bachelor Season 16, what should have been a private conversation between contestant Courtney Robertson and one of the show’s producers went public when the microphones were accidentally left on in between camera takes. The leaked conversation revealed the producer's role as an acting coach who was encouraging Robertson to fake certain emotions for the camera which she was not feeling.
Read more about this topic: The Bachelorette
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