The Press Box - 'Bachelorette Party' — Trouble in 'Bachelor in Paradise' (Ep. 319)

Episode Date: June 13, 2017

The Ringer's Juliet Litman is joined by insider Reality Steve to discuss the suspension of 'Bachelor in Paradise' filming over allegations of misconduct. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Juliette Lippman. On the phone today, I have Steve Carbone from RealitySteve.com. Hi, Steve. Hey, Juliet. How are you? Good. Thank you. How are you?

Well, I had the last day of my Las Vegas trip ruined because of this Paster and Paradise story. So it kept me away from the tables that I would have rather have been at than texting and emailing and talking to people. Yeah. Other than that. This is a really big deal. It started on. on Sunday evening, West Coast time late afternoon.

It came out that the cat, you, I think you broke the news, right? That the cast was in the airport, leaving Mexico, going back to their various homes on Sunday evening. And so how did that, so basically a random Instagram user who happened to be in the airport and a fan took a picture with most of the cast? Yeah. How did that come to your attention? Well, first of all, backtrack a couple of days. It was either Friday or Saturday. I can't remember which day it was.

I think it was Friday. Because DeMario started tweeting again on Friday, June 9th. Oh, he did. Okay. See, I was in Las Vegas from Thursday until today. So I might be getting my days mixed up. But on Friday or Saturday, I started getting people emailing, DMing, texting me, saying, hey, are some of these people back from filming because a lot of them are using social media?

And then I was told right after that, might have been Friday night, Saturday morning, production was stopped on the show. And I was like, okay, I didn't, why? And I didn't know anything until yesterday, which was Sunday, I was told why production was stopped. And that's when I sent out my tweet. Now, the one thing I did want to clarify, when I was first told, I was like, all right, give me the short version of why production was stopped. I was told this specifically. The contestants in question, we all know them by now. We're having sex in public.

Someone in Mexico saw them was very offended and is suing the show. So they had to stop production. Like that's what was told to me. So that's when I first tweeted out. That's what it was. Well, come to find out, I didn't realize that the person that was offended and that was doing the show was a producer on the show. Like that was the thing that I did not know.

Right. So let me just explain where we are now. It's Monday afternoon. And there's some discrepancy on the internet about using names. And I'm going to not use the woman's name. Just because this is a pretty disturbing episode. And it's still, the information is still coming out. And honestly, like, I just think it is the more respectful and also just kind of like the right thing to do at this point. Just because it's very complicated. And so anyway, so that's, I think that's just kind of like the, the basis. for this episode. But so basically what has happened is filming has been stopped on Bachelor in Paradise. The cast has gone home. And over the course of the last basically 24 hours now, information has come out that two cast members were involved in some kind of sexual situation in front of other cast members because it seems like there are witnesses. And as a result of that situation, a producer on the show has filed a third party

complaint. And I think TMZ said that it happened. Then the next day, she didn't show up for work. And then the second day after she filed this complaint. And it seems like there was some kind of sexual misconduct where the woman involved in it was so drunk that she couldn't have, she wasn't able to give full consent. And that's kind of where we are now. A couple of other things have come out since then as well in the last day or so. One being that not only is this season, can't. canceled. The entire Bachelor in Paradise could be canceled because of kind of like the minutia of how the show gets made. It's filmed in Mexico or the Mexico Board of Tourism foots a lot of the bill. And as a result of this scandal, they might not want to be associated with anymore. So this could be the end of Bachelor in Paradise. And there's like a lot. There's a lot I want to talk about here. First and foremost, I just want to say that if what happened, if what's being alleged is what happened. It's horrible, like just absolutely horrible. And, you know, it's really, it's really tough because so many people just like watch the show. And like it's been, it's more, it's literally more popular than ever. Bachelor in Paradise is coming on the heels of Nick Byall season. And obviously Rachel's season on right now, but the, you know, it's ongoing. So we don't have like a full ratings picture.

But Nick's season was the only show, only returning show on network television this past season to gain an audience. like for its ratings to increase over last year. The Bachelor is in, is over a decade old. Nick is like the 30th Bachelor. And it's more popular than ever. So it's like a really kind of like precarious time for the show. And for such like a horrible thing to happen when the show is more popular than ever. And there's more awareness of the Bachelor, the Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise.

Kind of makes even talking about it even trickier. And also in some ways kind of makes what's being alleged worse. because it's kind of like they have such a spotlight on them, and it sounds like it was really almost abused in the filming of Bachelor in Paradise. It is such a huge deal. Like, I honestly don't know exactly how you even approach a story like this because you know it's a lot of he said, she said,

which by the way is going to be the name of the podcast I have coming up with Charlene Joy, but that's another story for another day. But anyway, we are talking about he said, she said, in this situation. It's a guy and a girl, and I guarantee each of them have a different side to what actually happened. And we don't know, but I would guess that the people that were there, no. I mean, there also, there were cameras. So. And there were cameras.

There's tapes. But are we ever going to see footage? No. No. It's never going to. Nor should be. So, yeah. And if the thing goes to court, which I doubt it will ever get there, something tells me that there's

going to be hush money. There's going to be settlement money. And this thing, they're going to want to make this thing obviously just go. way. And it's so hard to know what's going on when we really don't, but everybody, you know, wants to have a reaction on a story like this. A summer show that we've all loved for the last three years gets canceled. And all of a sudden, ABC now has six weeks of four hours a week of nothing to fill that spot with. It's just like, yeah, that's a big deal in the television world that a show like this gets canceled. Yeah. And also they just announced that they were doing

winter games, which was going to be kind of like the winter Bachelor in Paradise and it was, although that's kind of like all that was known about it. So just I also wonder if like that will move forward and whatnot. Just also for the record, I reached out to ABC who directed

me to Warner Brothers and Warner's Brothers just right now has like an official statement. But you know what? I'll read it just for just for our record here. All Warner Brothers are saying right now is we've become aware of allegations, allegations of misconduct on the set at Bachelor in Paradise in Mexico. We've suspended production. We are conducting

a thorough investigation of these allegations. Once the investigation is complete, we'll take appropriate responsive action. So for them, it's ongoing. You know, that's kind of like the standard. This is giving a comment without giving comment. But, you know, that's like, you know, the responsible thing to say right now. It's just so complicated. Because like, how do you, do you think that people will be able to watch Rachel's season without thinking about this incident? I think it's going to be really tough. And I think that, you know, the statement that ABC released, which is fine, you know, it's just kind of cliche to give a statement like that. However, I can tell you right now, this show is canceled and it's not happening at least this summer.

As for future, we just don't know. But because of just the way TV works and knowing that they only had that resort for a set amount of date, there hasn't been any filming since last Tuesday. So we're coming up on six days where nothing's been filmed. they have a premier date of Tuesday, August 8th. Even if they spent everybody back in a week, they wouldn't be able to do what they do and turn it around and give us Bachelor in Paradise. So they can say that now,

but it's definitely canceled. As for Rachel's season, it sucks for her because all the attention is being brought off her season. And then tonight with the NBA finals, the fact that she's having a week off is certainly not going to help matters. And during that week off, this giant scandal breaks. I mean, I would think it's going to hurt a little bit. and it's going to take the image of the franchise.

Yeah. On the other hand, she's a week removed. Like, The Bachelor has a week removed from this, like, until it comes back. And, you know, attention spans are short. Although, I don't know. This is really, like, just quite bad. I was thinking of kind of, like, other historical incidents in reality TV or this has happened. Did you watch the challenge?

By any chance? Yes. There was always a, there was allegedly, there was a lawsuit from Tanya, who, also over like sexual misconduct against Buna Murray and then a couple of castmates on that show as well and ever since that happened like some of the rules have changed and the people involved

have never been back on the show and that that show like went on but the bachelor is just so much bigger and more popular than pretty much any other franchise so it's just it's just bizarre also the fan base is mostly female although I certainly know many males who watch and so for it to be like a sexual allegation where a woman could have been, you know, abused or assaulted, it's just like, the ramifications are really big. Like it's just everything having to, obviously on its face, that would be a big deal. But even just given like who watches the show and like who they try to appeal to, it's very significant.

Oh, it's huge. And, you know, like you said, challenge recovered from it. But like you said, challenges, the challenges on the cable show. This is a network television show. I don't think we've seen anything like this on a network reality show where there was a giant scandal. I mean, if you were to ask me my opinion right now on June 12th, what I thought the outcome of all this would be, my guess is Bachelor in Paradise, as we know it, is done. And if they do come back with a summer show next year, they will just tweak things, change the format, and change the title. because Bachelor in Paradise will now be,

that title will now be associated with this scandal, and I think they just get away from it. You go back to BachelorPad, or you think of a new show name and think of a new concept, which it's always going to be about dating and competition and maybe some challenges and stuff like that. They're not going to sway too far from that,

but I think the Bachelor in Paradise title is done. I'm going to see that again. I wonder this will also just change the relationship to, like, alcohol on the show. Because one thing you could always tell, obviously in paradise there's the bartender who they turned into like a character right so um and they just like really play up how the bartender's so central and like everyone goes to him with like their their they're like how they're feeling and whatever and so i wonder if this is like a moment where

they'll pivot away in some sense to being less um dependent on like a substance basically because like also you can tell at every cocktail party they're they're cocktail parties because they're holding drinks and like each bachelor has like a drug his go-to drink drink and um on the previous season of uh on nick season like he often had whiskey in his hand there was a lot of wine flowing and it's almost like a tacit part of the show that's not really discussed but i you can always tell when people are getting slosh and i just wonder if that will change and that that actually would be significant because i think it would affect how they cast you know what i mean well there's there's something from what you just said that i can

I can break on this podcast. I'm fine with announcing it and fine with announcing it right here. Actually, for this particular upcoming season of Badger Proditors, because remember, there were three days of filming before this was shut down. Yeah. So I do know what happened. The whole idea behind Jorge, the bartender was he was the bartender on the first day of filming, but then they brought in a former contestant who was this season's bartender,

who was eventually going to start out. Obviously, he was going to be the person handing out drinks, giving advice, but then would eventually go on dates. He'd be allowed to ask somebody on date. Who was it? Yeah. And it was, it's Wells. Oh, wow. Wow.

So Wells was going to be the bartender this year. Wells is actually still down in Mexico, by the way. Oh, really? Throw that in there. Yeah. Because, well, here's the other thing. I mean, this is a spoiler, but it's been out there. It's not about this particular show, but Evan Carly's wedding is this Saturday.

It's supposed to be this Saturday. As far as I know, taping this podcast, I guess things can change in the next five or six days. But Evan and Carly's wedding was set for June 17th, which is this Saturday. And then, you know, towards the end of Bachelor of Paradise airing, I guess it would have been late August, early September is when their wedding was going to get shown. But I don't, how this changes that? I don't know. So it was like they were filming the wedding. Yeah, they were filming.

they were getting their wedding filmed as part of the Paradise thing, kind of like what they did in Lacey and Markets in the first season of, now maybe do Evan and Carly get their own, you know, one hour or two-hour wedding special because they don't have any Paradise thing to loop it into. I'm assuming these two with five days until the wedding have signed a contract that said, hey, we're getting our wedding paid for and televised down in Mexico with the, you know, bachelor show. It just brings up so many questions that I just don't know.

But as of right now, I was told the wedding hasn't been canceled. It's just a matter of how it gets shown since it can't be looped into a Paradise episode. Right. Like does it become like a special at the end of Rachel's season? That's really interesting. And that's interesting about Wells that they have him become like the bartender because it does. It just sort of like plays into a lot of cliches about like a Mexican vacation, like the tequila is flowing or whatever. But also just really like it does speak to the fact that alcohol is like so primary on the show.

show and like they rely on it to like make a lot of drama happen which like I understand like that's kind of true on basically every reality show like everything that's not survivor basically is like you know they are drinking and they make it available to you and it's like not a good it's not a good place for people who who don't drink and the show like you said kind of thrives off it because when you're drinking and you're in your mid-20s which most of these female contestants are and I'm not just putting it on the females the guy has drink all the time as well and we've seen behavior from drunk people, you know, namely Chad last season. That's just been as appalling as some of the stuff that girls have done in the past on the show.

Absolutely. What about what about Ed? Who you said, who got like that? Oh, yeah. And then there's. Yeah. Yeah. You got Ed and Baxter Pad 3.

It's just like, yeah, it was the circus. And but yeah, you said, they thrive on it. And that's, you're never got to cut alcohol out of these shows. It'd be impossible because I guarantee the show would be boring. And it wouldn't draw as many eyeballs because people kind of. kind of want to see subconsciously or consciously, they want to see, they want to see drunken hookups and people acting stupid when they're drunk. Yeah, that's a, that's a conversation I was having with one of my coworkers here, which is, like,

the difference between the Bachelor and the Bacheloret and the Bacheloret and then Paradise. I mean, the Bachelor and Bachelorette are contrived, and you don't expect, you don't expect, like, a total, outside of like the first couple episodes, you don't expect someone to just sort of be off the rails. You don't expect it to really be messy. like it's a very kind of like tidy show everything's very scripted and orchestrated and then you have paradise which is like the flip side of the coin right where um you expect things to go create to go a little haywire you expect a lot of drama previously the drama has been um and i and i don't mean to equate what has been

alleged as like just like another like drama as part of paradise obviously quite worse um and much more serious but in the past the show has relied on breakups and people crying and just sort of like heart like just sort of like very basic a heartbreak like which is also they been amplified by people being drunk. And that's a really different kind of show than you get with The Bachelor where it's supposed to be like, oh, the fantasy. Like this is like the dark side of the fantasy where like things go crazy. And it just sounds like that was taken way, way, way too far with what happened to show.

And you know what's ironic about kind of all of this in a twisted, morbid way? is this is an episode or a season of unreal playing out before our very eyes. Absolutely. It's unbelievable. Like it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy that these people created a show that talks about the underlying workings of what goes on behind the scenes of a show and hookups and stuff like this and what could possibly go wrong. And, you know, here we are where a show essentially is getting canceled because of some

inappropriate behavior on somebody's part, you know. Do you have any insight into how the relationships between the producers and the contestants work, particularly in Paradise? On Bachelor, there's, like, one producer assigned to the lead, and then there's, like, a few other ones who work with the contestants. But do you have a sense of how that works in Paradise at all? I think it's the same because there's a lot of overlapping. Same producers that work on Bachelor and Bachelorette go down to Mexico and film for Paradise. I'm sure as you get down, you dwindle the numbers on this, it gets to. a point where you probably get a little more time, a little more one-on-one time with a producer,

but it's essentially done the same way. Like, there will be three to four different producers that will be the main ones that film, you know, ITMs or confessionals, and then you've got your regular producers that are behind the scenes and sitting in the control room looking on all the monitors and stuff like that. But again, it's an environment that not makes people drink, they can't make you do anything you don't want to do, but they are very, they're very good at their job. They know what they're doing. And there's a reason the show's been on for 34 seasons, along with six seasons of summer shows with three batch of pads and three paradises. You know, to be a contestant on this show now and blame anything on a producer,

but I understand sometimes how they can get frustrated of how they were treated or how things were actually shown versus what actually happened, you know. And that's the biggest problem with this whole story is we're never going to know what really went down that day because we're never going to see the footage. And just be very clear. And let this thing get to court. Just to be very clear, we shouldn't see that.

It's almost like for the legal case, there's like this evidence, but that's not for public consumption. And like part of the problem is that it was filmed at all. I think it does speak to like a new direction for the show though where it's just a little bit more like overtly sexually charged. Like it was obviously always very implicit. But with next season, there was like a few moments where you were like,

oh okay this is different like this is this is more overtly sexual even like some of the um in the his final one-on-one with uh Vanessa when they're when he's like wearing the tiny bathing suit or I was like okay like to the very end they're really playing up Nick sexuality here and I was like this is different I find it entertaining but this is different and this is not kind of like like the fake wholesomeness that they used to do which was like kind of fine for I was like fine whatever this is like more true maybe to who Nick is and like let's not all be so precious whatever um and then I had a bit of an issue like week with the like kind of like male stripping on Ellen on the group date on Rachel's season.

And now it sounds like this was just completely, you know, beyond and like just totally cross the line. And I think it just kind of speaks to like the direction of the show as it's like kind of gained more steam and popularity. It's like felt more comfortable shedding the disguise of like being about dating and like finding true love and just more being about like what kind of crazy shit can we get a man and a woman to do together. and it's interesting. You brought up the Ellen date, and then even in the same episode, they had eight guys with their shirts off and basically in their underwear mud wrestling. Can you imagine if that was done on The Bachelor? Yeah.

And we had eight girls mud wrestling each other to win the affection of Nick Vile or whoever the Bachelor is. I mean, go on. There would be so much outrage to be unbelievable. Totally. But it's the double standard we live in. I know. I know. But it's sort of like that kind of murky, like, line.

of like what's okay and what is not okay leads to this kind of situation where it's just because it's completely beyond what's acceptable. And that's because it's like a shift, it's like really a shifting kind of like moral boundary or moral compass or whatever. And I don't know. It makes watching the show tricky. I like, I have a, I don't want to be too much of a downer

on this Bachelor podcast. And obviously it's different in this case where we're talking talking about something really serious. But when just like watching the show week in week out, it makes it a little bit more difficult to enjoy just because it is changing. in that regard. I want a monkey wrench into things, to say the least, because you just don't know how people are going to react.

And like you said, with the challenge, they've had numerous seasons since that incident happened and people seem to have gotten over it. And it seems like America in general, with any scandal or any major news, eventually just gets over it. And you wonder if that's going to hold form with this, but they might not have to worry about getting over it with Bachelor of Paradise because Bachelor in Paradise might be done forever. It's certainly done this season, and it just might just be a different summer show where they call it, you know, whatever. I just think it's a game changer to have now six weeks

of programming from August 8th until mid-September where they get four hours a week of this show that's now gone. I don't know what it's been television-wise. I'm fascinated. Yeah. What are they going to do? Run last season, Bachelor in Paradise and just replay it? I don't know. Like, also, four hours. That's, oh, man, I don't know. One thing you've been. One thing you've you could probably attest to is that they have characters like or I shouldn't call them characters. They have men and women rotate in and out over the course of The Bachelor. So, or Bachelor in Paradise.

So even though there was one group of people who were down in Mexico, there surely were going to be more coming. And I'm sure some of them were Rachel's guys. And I wonder like how it changes their contracts if they were going to, you know, if, did they get paid to be on Paradise? Yeah. So I wonder if like people who were supposed to get paid, they still will get paid and all this stuff. I read one story where it looks like ABC will just fulfill the contract of all the contestants

and everyone's going to get paid what they were set to get paid. But it varies. Not everyone signs the same contract for that show. Some people are paid a daily rate. Some people are paid a flat rate. Daily rate, meaning every day that you're out there, you're getting this much money. Some people are paid a flat rate to come on. And that's usually like the veterans, you know, the old schoolers.

Yeah, someone like that. I guarantee Wells wasn't on a daily pay. I'm sure he negotiated like, well, I'll do the show this season for X amount of money. I did see that it looked like a story where it said that it looked like they were going to go through and just fulfill everyone's contracts. But, you know, we don't necessarily know for sure. I just think that that's something that ABC needs to drop. But yeah, this show is different in that they do pay the contestants to go out there. And there was a cast list that was released by, you know, the media outlets, people.

that showed nine girls and seven guys. Right. That were set. They said that was initial cast. Well, I can tell you that they left off. There were actually 12 guys to start the show and nine, well, 11 guys to start to show nine girls. One guy came in on the second day. Oh, wow.

So the first rose ceremony, which is right before the show was canceled or production stopped filming, the ceremony. And that's when this all came up. But basically it was nine girls. Yeah, nine girls had roses to give out. out and there was 12 guys that were there at the time. So nine, the girls were giving out roses at the first rose ceremony. Oh, wow.

And, yeah, so that warrant in the initial people.com cat's list were all racial guys. Oh, interesting. I mean, I have all the names of everybody that was in the cast. So, yeah, it was. So of the 12, there were six, six of Rachel's guys were in the, of the 12. and there were that were in Mexico set to be on the show to come in after that first row ceremony that I'm also aware of that were Nick's girls as well. So they were really stacking it with Nick and Rachel like reason he bias. Yeah.

Yeah, it was. And that's the way it's kind of been done the last, the first three seasons of Paradise. It's the two most recent seasons in everyone's mind. Like last season, Bachelor in Paradise had 13 of Ben's girls appear on the show at some point. And who was last year's Bachelor at, Jojo had nine of her guys. here on the show. So yeah, it's good because those are the people that are most relevant to. And then they'll always throw their, you know, one or two randoms in there that will show up later on that people are like, who? Yeah.

What season were they on? Who is this person? But yeah, the majority of the cast is always the two most recent seasons that we're filming. Right. And that was definitely the case this time. I think that also kind of contributes to why like this season before it even happened was like going to be more salacious just because like we just said, like, Rachel and next seasons were kind of like trending in that direction anyway. Oh, yeah. And I think that you could just see. I mean, when seasons are airing, I mean, you had four of Rachel's friends show up on that mud wrestling group date to help, quote, unquote, judge when they didn't judge anything. It was all done by fan response of who won the wrestling date when Bright beat Kenny in the finals. but it's just funny because I made the comment in my recap

and I'm sure most people were thinking the same thing. It's like, yeah, these girls are basically just getting a head start on guys that are probably going to be down in paradise. Like, it's the running joke that, you know, just basically, all right, which guy would I be interested in? If they had them drive over in the bus over to the mud wrestling date and they were talking to them and stuff like that. So, I mean, it's just what the show has become.

It's become an incestual hookup between people from different seasons. and then of course it's also mainly turned into Instagram shilling and product shilling. Right. And people building their brands on Instagram. It's true. The canceling of the show throws off the kind of the ecosystem of the contestants afterwards. I mean, it does, like just to be totally straight up about it because it's just like less exposure for them. It's pretty wild. I, you know, it's just a, this is just how the whole thing is really just so dark. I don't really have like a lot of analysis beyond that because like it's just like really just like gross and distasteful. So and wrong.

It's not just a matter of taste and like judgment, but like it's bad. It's really bad. Yeah. All right. Steve, thank you for calling. You're obviously poised to have insight on this. So thank you for calling in today. And Bachelor at Party will carry forth.

They'll be back next week with the new episode of the show. and we'll be following the story. Thanks for listening, as always, and thank you to Hotel Tonight. Things change, the weather changes, your mood definitely changes. So why lock yourself into plans that might change? With Hotel Tonight, you don't have to because you'll get incredible deals on awesome hotels, even at the last minute. Booking on Hotel Tonight gives you the freedom and the flexibility to play things by ear,

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