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Rachel Lindsay is opening up about a vulnerable moment during her time as “The Bachelorette”.
The former attorney, who served as the star of season 21 of the hit dating series, joined Showtime’s “Ziwe” on Monday and shared her disappointment with the franchise for the limited “selection of men of colour” cast in her season.
According to Lindsay, she was worried about backlash for choosing a white man as her suitor at the end. The reality star and husband Bryan Abasolo have been married since 2019.
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“All three of the Black Bachelors and Bachelorettes have ended up with partners who are not of colour,” she explained. “It’s something I was worried about before I went on the show… I think I got a little bit more grace because I was the first and people were just excited that a person of colour was in this role.”
Since Lindsay became the first Black person to lead the show, only two others have followed in her footsteps in the “Bachelor”/”Bachelorette”’s 33-season history. Lindsay, Matt James and Tayshia Adams all ended up dating, engaged or married to a white person.
“There was a point where I broke down on camera, and they used my tears for something else, but I was getting upset at the selection of men of colour,” she recalled, later revealing she learned “several” of the Black men on her season “didn’t date Black women” and that the showrunners “found it interesting.”
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“I said, ‘You think that’s interesting? That’s my life. I live that,’” Lindsay added.
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Lindsay has been an outspoken critic of the “Bachelor” franchise’s lack of diversity.