Clayton Echard Has Stressed Jesse Palmer TF Out This Season on ‘The Bachelor’
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Starting a new job always = stress, but taking over as host of The Bachelor seems to have been more anxiety-inducing than Jesse Palmer could have anticipated and it’s pretty much all Clayton Echard’s fault.
Jesse talked about how stressful his first season as the new face of Bachelor Nation has been in a new interview with E! News published this week, and in news that won’t shock anyone, Clayton’s decision to basically light the Bachelor rule book on fire and then toss the ashes in the air like confetti has *not* made settling into the new job easy on Jesse. TBH, though, the former lead turned host doesn’t seem all that torn up by it because, well, at least Clayton is delivering on the franchise’s perpetual promise to bring the ~drama~.
“A huge theme this season is there are no rules,” Jesse said, presumably for the benefit of anyone in the middle of the Venn diagram of “Cares About How Jesse Palmer’s First Season as Bachelor Host Is Going” and “Is Not Aware That Clayton Has Been All Over the Damn Place as the Bachelor” (which cannot be a big group, right). “Clayton is not afraid to take risks and make decisions that he’s going to own in order to find his person.”
In case you’re saving up the eps for a Hulu binge, Clayton’s shenanigans so far have been mostly rose-related and have included offering a contestant a rose literally hours BEFORE the night one cocktail party (and having said rose rejected, at that) and musing about the possibility of taking a rose back from someone before his next rose ceremony. If Clayton goes through with the rose reneging, it will be a franchise first, according to Jesse.
Like a good informercial pitch bot reality TV host, Jesse made sure to point out that WAIT, THERE’S MORE (as in more drama and shenanigans to come this season, ofc).
“And there’s so much more ahead,” he added. “Things that [have] people, myself, and our producers sitting on the edge of our seats because we just couldn’t believe what was happening. We had never seen it before, there was no precedent for it. This is going to be a really eye-opening season for a lot of different reasons and you’re going to see more of that, I think, coming up in this next episode.”
He loses points for failing to work in a winky use of the show’s “most dramatic season ever” catchphrase, but he earned back points for throwing in some lowkey petty shade at the pre-him version of the show (which he described as “formulaic”).
“Viewers at home will see things this season that they’ve never seen in 20 years having watched The Bachelor,” he added. “Sometimes those decisions to a lot of people at home may feel like they’re sort of straying off the beaten path. It’s not as formulaic as what we’ve seen in recent seasons, but I think that’s a little bit refreshing about him.”
When Jesse wrapped up his “Why You Should Totally Not Boycott This Season” pitch, he admitted that as entertaining and refreshing as Clayton’s upcoming slate of rule-breaking and poor decision-making (unless ABC has gone to new levels of deception in the trailers for the season, he’s going to profess his love to not one, not two, but three women before the season is over) will be for viewers, for his on-set mentor/babysitter/low-key doppelgänger, it was just stressful AF.
“Now, as a host, that can also be very stressful,” Jesse said. “Because you have to be willing to go there with him to help him get through it. So it’s a little bit of all the feelings that I’m having right now with Clayton.”
Just in case anyone is worried that this means Jesse and Clayton aren’t still #Bros4Life, here’s a picture of them looking fully ready to film a grown-man reboot of The Parent Trap on NYE together to soothe any fears:
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