Rose lovers, we have our next leading lady. On Monday morning Bachelor alum Clare Crawley was announced as the 2020 Bachelorette on Good Morning America.
Crawley made her debut as the runner-up on Juan Pablo’s season of The Bachelor, and went on to Bachelor in Paradise and The Bachelor Winter Games. Nonetheless, she’s back for another shot at love after her infamous break-up moment with Juan Pablo and brief two-month engagement with Beniot Beasejour-Savard.
The season 16 star will be 39 when her journey begins — making her the oldest lead in the franchise's history. The announcement has come with a variety of split opinions that commend the franchise for choosing someone of older age, while others would have liked a lead from recent seasons such as Tayshia Adams or Tia Booth.
However, Crawley is looking to her age an asset, stating, “A lot of people put it out there as this negative thing. But for me, it just is more years under my belt, more learning and knowing what I want, what I don’t want and what I won’t settle for.”
The Bachelor franchise is known to always deliver drama, but the past few seasons have been oversaturated in pettiness. Peter Weber’s season of The Bachelor has received a lot of flux about the young ages of contestants and its correlation to the drama.
“You see a lot of people talking about the age of contestants,“ Robert Mills, the senior VP of alternative programming at ABC, said. “ I think that’s something we need to look at and say ‘Does it need to be aged up? Are these girls ready?’ ”
The latest Bachelorette’s fifth attempt to find love will begin on May 18, 2020. Here’s how Twitter reacted to Clare Crawley being announced as the 2020 Bachelorette:
