PureDWTS Season 24 – Kaitlyn Bristowe Goes On Twitter Rant, Claims She Was Told She “Wasn’t Allowed” to do DWTS
Not a casting rumor, but I found this interesting enough to be considered relevant to the current season. Since I’m assuming Kaitlyn just found out that Nick Viall was confirmed to be a part of this season’s cast, I’m assuming what follows in in response…
So, in light of some conversations Heidi & I have been having recently about the subtle sexism we’ve seen on DWTS, I find this exchange quite interesting. Granted, it was the creator of The Bachelor that allegedly told Kaitlyn she couldn’t do DWTS, but it still makes me wonder if DWTS has even bothered to reach out to any former Bachelorettes to extend an offer. Including Nick, we’ve now had FOUR former Bachelors on the show (Jake Pavelka, Sean Lowe, & Chris Soules being the other three), and only 1.5 Bachelorettes (Trista Sutter & Melissa Rycroft, who wasn’t even a Bachelorette – and she was a last-minute casting to replace Nancy O’Dell). Even if it was a timing issue (Bachelorette tapes in the spring to air in the summer, Bachelor tapes in the summer to air in the fall) it still seems odd that they’ve never booked a Bachelorette on the fall season, when there wouldn’t be a conflict.
But really, if this is true, the reasoning Fleiss gave really chaps my ass – especially when you consider that Jake and Nick, in particular, were totally looking to extend their 15 minutes of fame by doing DWTS, and made no secret about it. I think it may have been more of a monetary thing for Sean & Chris, but still – they answered the call. I’m sure this dude will deny & deflect that the conversation ever happened, but I’d really love to hear his explanation for why it’s ok for Bachelors to “get famous off his show” and not Bachelorettes. All ears, baby 😎
UPDATE: So Fleiss decided to fan the flames by tweeting about Nick on DWTS…and got a well-deserved beating on Twitter. Keep those tweets coming, sisters. 😎 Will be interested to see if he ever addresses Kaitlyn’s claims…to quote my friend @KristynBurtt, “his silence is deafening”. -Court-
UPDATE #2: My god, this just gets better and better 😛 Fleiss’ finally replied to all the flak he was getting with a lame tweet about how Melissa won All-Stars and “how quickly they forget” – as if that somehow made up for this disparity in the number of Bachelors vs. Bachelorette’s that have done DWTS. Hey Fleiss, by your logic, then, we shouldn’t need to elect any more black Presidents – cause one has already won, y’know? Anywho, then poor Trista (who I admittedly forgot, since season 1 seemed like an eternity ago, and she was the first eliminated) jumped into the fray, reminding Fleiss that she was on the show, too…which Fleiss then gave a bit of a condescending reply to. Then he finally tried to smooth everything over by saying he’d be totally supportive of Kaitlyn doing DWTS…to which Kaitlyn got the final word, and took a well-deserved jab at Fleiss’ questionable use of the word “historical”. One has to wonder if we’ll suddenly see a Bachelorette on a future season of DWTS, as a result of this brouhaha…-Court-
Guys you forgot Trista Sutter, the OG Bachelorette who competed DWTS back in Season 01
Corrected, but maybe be a bit more patient next time, Leonie – been flying by the seat of my pants all day
That still doesn’t compare to all the Bachelors we’ve seen on the show. And the excuse they gave her is just lame.
@Courtney: Actually, the Bachelor tapes in the Fall, concurrent with the fall season of DWTS, and airs in January.
The Finale where he proposes to his fiancée and the subsequent After the Final Rose show actually airs the week before the spring season of DWTS.
The Bachelor is fresh in people’s minds, but unless you’re looking for fame, I can’t see why Bachelor’s would accept. Once ATFR airs, they can finally try and be a real couple.
Bachelorettes would actually be more likely to accept because their season tapes during Spring DWTS and airs right after, usually ending in May.
That excuse is pure BS. Like 80% (or more) of the people cast on that show are hungry for fame, and Fleiss is plain crazy if he think that stops the minute the Backelor(ette) is over. There’s a small(and shrinking) percentage of people who truly go on The Bachelor(ette) for love. If people not wanting fame was that big of a deal to him, he should reconsider the way casting is done for the Bachelor(ette) in its entirety.
You don’t really believe that even 90% of the people on Bach/ette go on there looking for love, do you Justin??
I would guess that’s true of maybe one girl/guy out of every season.
@PH: Of course not. Almost of all of the contestants go on the show for fame, travel, free vacation, experience, but if they get proposed to, so be it.
But the Bachelor franchise at least has to give the illusion of “looking for love” for a short period of time just to maintain perceptions. That’s especially true if they want to keep running seasons of “Happily Ever After?” on Freeform. They’ll need new people.
I’m just saying that the logistics of taping and the illusion make sense to use more Bachelorettes, particularly after what happened with Chris and Whitney when he did DWTS. At least you can pretend you’re a happy couple for a few months.
Then again, this is the franchise that spoiled their own season this year, so I guess all bets are off.
Then again, Kaitlyn was the Bachelorette right after Chris Soules, so that might have been something they decided that year.
It could also be that Nick Viall seems to be the golden boy of the Bachelor franchise. After all, they allowed him to join Kaitlyn’s season in episode 6 after they’d already gone through two rounds of dates, which had never been done in the history of Bachelor/Bachelorette.
To the same point as Laura made, what does Fliess even mean by “we don’t want people wanting fame after the show?” If an average Joe person decides to participate in a nationally televised show, it’s an objective fact that the person desires fame to some degree. If the people on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette really only wanted to find a partner, they’d just going a dating website. It’s kind of an oxymoron to say: “Let’s find people who want to put their lives on primetime television for a few months, but make sure these aren’t people looking for fame.” Additionally, it’s none of his business what people do once they are no longer on his shows. That’s like the NBA telling an athlete he can’t be a real estate agent after he retires.
Personally, I think it was the way they chose to “punish” her for spoiling her season (reality Steve reported she chose neither then it came out on her snapchat that she was in bed with Shawn. I hope he responds
Unfortunately, it IS his business what they do once off the show. I imagine (Reality Steve prob has a better idea) that their contracts have some stipulations about TV after their runs, especially if you are the lead. You can’t just do whatever you want – and by the time your contract is up, you self life for DWTS is gone.
I don’t watch The Bachelor, but my problem with the contestants we get from the show (with the exception of Melissa) is that they are boring, can’t dance, and last way too long. I also thought Melissa was boring, but at least she could dance. Kaitlyn apparently had dance experience, so at least she may have been fun to watch. Watching these male contestants stumble through 7-8 weeks of competition without really improving while they wax poetic about some girl they’ve known 5 seconds is not my idea of a good time.
I honestly don’t get why the show wouldn’t want its Bachelorette contestants on the show. Is it really just rampant sexism? It doesn’t make any sense. My preference would be that we wouldn’t ever see another one of them on the show, but I guess I’ll brace myself for Nick.
The reason is clear. DWTS has a harder time booking male celebrities and often have to dip into the bachelor pool. Pavelka was never a popular bachelor so there was no need to grab him for ratings other than needing a guy to fill the roster. Melissa was also added to fill the roster–literally, someone dropped out and they asked who is readily available who can do this with short notice and some skills to pull off Week 1 with no practice time–” I know let’s pick the girl that was americas sweetheart after she got dumped and embarrassed in tv and, oh, she happens to be a former dallas cheerleader! I’m sure Trista was never their top choice and was in fact the first eliminated.
@Princess Heidi Yeah, you’re probably right that there’s something in their contracts that allows the producers of The Bachelor to tell them they can’t go on other shows, but that just sucks. I can’t imagine how frustrated I’d be if someone who no longer employed me could tell me which jobs I was allowed to take. I know they willingly agreed to it when they signed up for The Bachelor, but it’d still be frustrating.
From what I’ve read from Reality Steve, essentially all media they do has to be ABC approved for a year after the finale airs (6 months after for Bachelor in Paradise).
To quote my sister: “where nick goes controversy follows” lol. I hope they get her on the show next season now.
Who cares that Trista did it S1? The show was *just* starting, for pete’s sake. It’s not the same. Then v. now is apples v. oranges.
Nick grosses me out. So does Fleiss.
I have a feeling we may see a Bachelorette on DWTS in the near future just to counteract this. 😛
Not sure if this possibility has been mentioned anywhere on the site yet (I’ve looked but haven’t seen so if it has I apologize) but Kaitlyn’s season of Bachelorette aired in summer 2015 so I’m guessing the DWTS contract she was talking about was probably for the season that started soon afterward, Season 21, aka the season that Val supposedly was set to have a different partner than the one he got but the first one dropped out last-minute and now I’m thinking it may have been Kaitlyn. Not that it’s going to affect anything going forward I’ve just been wondering who that person could have been in the back of my mind since then. 😛
I’m sure we will Julia, probably next season. Isn’t the new Bachelorette meant to be mixed race as well? Two birds with one stone will be coming to mind for TPTB.
The best part of this whole drama is that it will rankle the Bachelor franchise producers, much like their last-minute switch to JoJo Fletcher from Caila for last season’s Bachelorette did. Caila would have been the first minority Bachelorette lead had she gotten the role.
To me, it’s great because Kaitlyn and Andi Dorfman are probably the two black sheep of the Bachelorettes. Both have been quite critical of the franchise in the past and speak their minds a lot. I find this all very amusing.