ABC
Clare Crawley and Chris Harrison during the premiere of The Bachelorette.
Michelle Money is a veteran of the Bachelor world who knows exactly how the franchise operates, but even she says it’s “unbelievable” how much The Bachelorette is editing the show to make Clare Crawley look bad.
Money first appeared on season 15 of The Bachelor, where she was eliminated in the final five. She later appeared on season two of Bachelor Pad and the first season of Bachelor in Paradise. Money and Crawley met on the set of Bachelor in Paradise, and have been friends ever since. That’s why she feels especially annoyed with the way Crawley has been portrayed on The Bachelorette.
“Production, I feel like, is totally doing her dirty,” Money said on Us Weekly’s podcast, “Here For the Right Reasons.” “It’s just unbelievable to me that they have these images, filming her between a bush, talking to a producer. Those conversations can be so taken out of context. The way that they’ve kind of shown these little clips of her talking to producers in a back room saying ‘Let’s speed this up.’
“First of all, Clare spent an equal amount of time with every one of those guys and that’s what’s frustrating is that you don’t get to see the whole story. The way they’re editing this storyline is so out of context that it’s just so frustrating as her friend to just sit by and be like ‘You guys have no moral compass.’ It’s unbelievable.
“Come on do you guys really honestly think that she was not talking about any other guy? You can take anyone’s life, film it for an entire day, and take little snippets. We all know this. We’ve all seen this show enough to know editing is involved.”
It’s impossible to know how detached from reality the televised version of events really is, but Crawley has expressed similar frustrations, albeit in a much more subtle and hidden way.
Michelle Money Thinks The Bachelorette Planned to Replace Clare From the Start
At this point, it’s clear that The Bachelorette brought in Tayshia Adams as a replacement for Crawley ahead of time. The timeline of that swap is a little fuzzy, though.
ABC executive Robert Mills said on a podcast that Crawley’s decision not to award a rose at the end of the comedy roast group date was the moment producers knew they needed to call in a replacement. But spoilers expert Reality Steve tweeted that’s “flat out untrue,” because according to him, Adams was brought to the show just nine days after filming began. He says that doesn’t leave enough time for Mills’ story to be plausible.
Money told Us Weekly that she thinks ABC was always “executing a plan” to villainize Crawley and supplant her with Adams.
“It feels to me like they had a plan, and they were executing the plan,” Money said. “And I’m not necessarily saying it was a bad plan. Clare obviously fell in love with Dale very quickly, but the irony is that Tayshia had to have come in and quarantined before even filming. So they have this girl already on standby, quarantining, before they even know what’s going on with Clare and Dale. So it just feels like what’s going on behind the scenes that Clare has no idea what’s going on, that was completely manipulated, and produced. And that’s what pisses me off about this show.”
Chris Harrison Says Clare Crawley Was ‘Certainly Not’ Forced Out
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, The Bachelorette‘s host Chris Harrison brushed off speculation that the show forced Crawley out of her role as the lead. He added a caveat, though.
“But that’s totally up to interpretation, and I think next week will be very enlightening,” Harrison said. “I’ll let everybody judge for themselves.”
The enlightening moment will be a conversation between Harrison and Crawley that’s shown on episode four. According to ABC, Harrison “cautions her that her journey cannot continue on its current path, only to have her make a stunning revelation.” The details of that conversation will go a long way toward the shaping perception that Crawley was forced out or left on her own accord.
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