New Season Of Bachelorette Is Still Happening — But Maybe In Another State
Chris Harrison is giving us hope that Clare’s season of The Bachelorette will still happen
It feels like the world has been turned completely upside down since March 13, when The Bachelorette was supposed to begin filming, and when ABC execs announced they were halting production on the show indefinitely. Since then, the coronavirus pandemic has raged on, and it’s hard to imagine a show with such a large cast and crew moving forward, even as states make moves toward reopening. But according to Chris Harrison, there are no plans to scrap Clare’s season, and ABC is looking into every possibility to help the season move forward — including moving filming to another state.
“Right now it is still up in the air as far as timing goes. The state of California just took a big step back,” he told ET‘s Lauren Zima. “Who knows what is going on, so maybe we leave. Maybe we have to go to a state that has their stuff together and we can shoot.”
Harrison continued, “Maybe we are doing this in Texas — I don’t know — but right now we are just waiting and seeing where we can do this safely until we can do it the right way.”
Harrison has said all along that there are no plans to cancel Clare’s season, and anyone who’s been tuning in to Listen to Your Heart knows that Clare’s men are still actively being recast. But Harrison has been adamant that filming and production for The Bachelorette will only resume when pandemic conditions improve and it’s safe to have so many people gather in one place. He says he doesn’t want to do the show virtually, or put on a scaled-down quarantine version.
“I don’t want to make this a quarantine version and I don’t want it to look weird,” he said. “I am seeing a lot of stuff on TV that I am not loving. This is an escape. People want to get away, and I want to do it right. And when we can do it right, I want to do it with Clare — and yeah, we are re-casting still, because who knows what the world is going to look like when we get done.”
However, it’s possible that the show will go on with the cast remaining in one place, without all the travel the lead and her suitors normally do, sort of like Bachelor in Paradise.
“We have talked about maybe going to one location and lock it down or maybe we can only travel a little bit,” Harrison explained. “We are just throwing out ideas, nothing is definitive. I want it to look like The Bachelorette, so people realize, ‘This is my show. OK, I can escape, I could fall into this.'”
