Surprising Celebrity Fans of The Bachelor
As yet another season of The Bachelor kicks off this week and America settles into its collective couch to watch Colton “The Virgin” Underwood sift through 30 blond Hannahs to find true love, be sure to prepare yourself for an onslaught of Bachelor-related social media posts from friends, distant relatives, and celebrities like Allison Williams, Amy Schumer, and Jennifer Lawrence. In fact, stars like those three may be even more into The Bachelor than any random high school acquaintances on your Facebook feed: They’re only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the surprisingly huge group of Hollywood A-listers who have made a habit of livetweeting, guest-starring on, and professing their love for the ABC reality show.
Here are just a handful of members from that elite group, each of whom will presumably have the exact same Monday night plans as the rest of the Bachelor Nation for the next three months.
Allison Williams: On Tuesday, hours after Underwood’s debut episode had premiered the previous night, Williams appeared on Live With Kelly and Ryan, where she and Ryan Seacrest explained their mutual love of the show to Kelly Ripa. “I have a heartbeat and I live in America—I watch The Bachelor. It is mandatory viewing,” Williams said. “As an anthropologist, I am just interested in the study of my fellow human beings. And what better place to study them than a mansion where they seem to have no water to serve anyone?” The actress went on to admit that she’s a “huge Colton fan,” teased that she’s expecting a “petite blonde” to take home the final rose, and reiterated, “I love it deeply.”
Williams also guest-starred on the Bachelor Live aftershow in 2016, where she described how she met her now-husband, Ricky Van Veen, at a Bachelor viewing party, and got engaged at the same party three years later. “I would not be married to my husband if it weren’t for this show,” she said at the time.
Dakota Fanning: Though the 24-year-old became known for her preternatural seriousness as a child star, Fanning told W last year that she holds a special place in her heart for reality TV like the Real Housewives franchises and, of course, The Bachelor, which she called, “high, high drama.” She continued, “Especially the last Bachelor. It was some of the best TV I’ve ever seen, the Arie and Becca breakup. I was screaming at the TV, ‘Leave already. Leave already!'”
Fanning went on to give a more nuanced critique of the series. “You know what I don’t like on The Bachelor and what I need them to stop doing, if they’re listening, is introducing the first five guys on the ‘After the Final Rose,'” she said. “They have Becca, they put a façade of the mansion behind her, and then have a couple guys come out. They did it with Rachel. That has to stop. It’s so cringeworthy, and I don’t like that at all. It’s cringe-y enough on the night in front of the real mansion. I don’t need a façade of the ivy-covered mansion behind her, and I didn’t like that at all.”
Taye Diggs: Though he hasn’t spoken openly about The Bachelor since 2012, Diggs was very into the show that season (starring Ben Flajnik). “I’m watching DVR ed episodes of the bachelor. I’m addicted. I may have a problem. I’m sorry,” he tweeted at one point during the season.
Jennifer Aniston: Aniston is a longtime Bachelor stan, having spoken multiple times about loving the spectacle of it all. “It’s junk food. It’s great junk food. It’s a train wreck!” she told Access in 2015, adding, “Have you seen them? You can’t feel bad for them. They’ve done that to themselves, just to entertain us.” And in late 2016, ahead of Nick Viall’s turn as the titular bachelor, she joined Jimmy Kimmel to predict which four women would make it through the full season; she chose both fan fave Corinne Olympios and Rachel Lindsay, who would go on to become the next bachelorette, proving that she’s got a firm grasp on the show’s inner workings.
Jennifer Lawrence: As an avowed and very vocal Vanderpump Rules and Real Housewives fan, it should come as no surprise that J.Law is also an avid Bachelor viewer. Host Chris Harrison has previously described how Lawrence approached him on the Oscars red carpet to profess her love for the show, and in a 2018 interview with Vanity Fair, she shared her idea for a Bachelor spinoff called Breakup Island. “I can’t tell you the details, but there are very distinct cast members like The Bachelor, between the ages of 20 and 50, who you stay with and care about,” she said. “My agent was laughing at me when I told him. But I am clearly obsessed.”
Andrew Garfield: In 2012, Garfield told Total Film that he prefers to balance his more serious work with lighthearted TV. “When I’m working on something very intense—like [Spider-Man] was very intense to work on, believe it or not, and I’m doing a play at the moment which is very, very intense—whenever I’m not on stage, I wanna watch reality television. I wanna watch, like, The Voice or The Bachelor,” he said, adding of the latter, “Don’t be surprised by that—it’s the greatest show on TV!”
Amy Schumer: The comedian appeared on a group date episode of Kaitlyn Bristowe’s 2015 season of The Bachelorette, and later confessed that she’d happily become the next bachelorette if certain conditions were met. That said, she came away from her guest appearance a little disenchanted with the whole production. “They just pump booze into people and are like, ‘Perform! And do this thing you’ve never done before!'” she told PopSugar. “I love that show, but it was totally dark.”
Related: Dakota Fanning on Shooting The Alienist and Her Love of Reality TV
