One of the chief criticisms of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette has been that neither show has a good track record with diversity. ABC Entertainment president Paul Lee teased a change, at least for the next season of The Bachelorette, during the Television Critics Association Press Tour on Saturday.
“I’d be very surprised if [the bachelorette] in the summer isn’t diverse,” Lee said, reports TheWrap. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but I think that’s likely to happen.”
The lack of diversity on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette is so noticeable that ABC was even faced with a racial discrimination lawsuit in 2012, although that was later dismissed, notes Deadline. It has also been difficult for a network that has pushed for more diversity in its scripted shows, with hits like Black-ish and Fresh off the Boat, to explain this.
And whenever The Bachelor and The Bachelorette have a black or Latino contestant, they are often eliminated quickly, as blogger Karen X. Cheng pointed out last year.
“We had a Latino bachelor, obviously,” Lee said Saturday, referring to The Bachelor’s Juan Pablo Galavis. “We’re doing a whole lot of tweaks. Because we have the farm team, right, which allows us to then pick the next one.”