Rachel Lindsay suggests there’s a double standard on ‘The Bachelorette’.
She says ABC expected her to be “almost perfect” as the first black “Bachelorette,” but somehow managed to hire a violent white woman.
On her podcast, Higher Learning, Lindsay criticized the network for casting Taylor Frankie Paul as its latest candidate, saying Paul “obviously shouldn’t have been on The Bachelorette” after he was filmed attacking his then-partner.
“It was interesting to me that the show wanted to take a risk, but it was too risky to cast a lead character of color,” she said.
Lindsay said the network was “casting the first lead character of color… It took 15 years, but that character had to be near perfect on paper because it had to be meaningful to the audience.”
She told co-host Van Lathan that it was “too risky for her to voice her opinion or show her personality” because the station feared she would be seen as an “angry black woman.”
Frankie Paul’s controversial casting came with a lot of baggage — even before the network canceled her season after TMZ released a video of her violently throwing a chair at her ex-girlfriend in front of her children three days before the season premiere.
Sports analyst Emmanuel Acho, who hosted the series’ special in 2021, said on a separate podcast that he underwent a “rigorous” background check before being asked to host.
“It’s disgusting to me that the franchise knew everything there was to know about this woman and turned a blind eye,” he said.
A spokeswoman for ABC’s parent company, Disney, had no comment.
