Sex, Booze and Preying on Unstable Girls: Shocking New Books Rips the Lid off the Sordid Secrets Behind TV’s ‘The Bachelor’
July 11 2024, Published 7:00 a.m. ET
A shocking new book rips the lid off the sordid secrets behind TV’s The Bachelor, including booze binges, limo sex romps, and pushing gal contestants to be raunchy and wild.
The behind-the-scenes scandals are laid bare in the bombshell book, Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV, where author and television critic Emily Nussbaum tells how show bigwigs pried shocking and racy behavior out of women contestants, pushing them to the edge.
In one revelation, casting director Marki Costello confesses to seeking gals who were emotionally shaky and could be pressured into breakdowns for dramatic viewing, according to a review of the book by RadarOnline.com.
If they were “unstable and pretty,” she said, “That’s gold.”
Costello psychologically profiled them for weaknesses, creating “a whiteboard with bullet points suggesting qualities that might make the women crack — “‘Daddy’s Girl,’ ‘Recovering Anorexic,’ ‘Just Got Dumped.’”
Free booze was used to fuel wild antics, the author claims.
The gals arrived the first day sipping champagne in limos, says the book.
“Because there were no porta-potties, a few of them wound up hiking up their ballgowns and peeing on the side of the road,” the book reveals.
“Inside the house, they were offered more drinks, but no food,” the book says.
“And when the food finally arrived (the caterers had been fired, they were told) it was disgusting stuff: white bread with squeeze cheese and pickled cucumber. “Unsurprisingly, they got trashed, fast.”
Rhonda Rittenhouse, a real estate agent and one of the first bachelorettes, recalled trays of cocktails constantly circulating, saying she “felt like a caged rat.”
Contestants were pushed into humiliating themselves, like doing belly dances to entice The Bachelor.
Show creator Mike Fleiss pushed Shannon for two hours to take off her robe and get into a hot tub. “She wanted to know if we had cameras in the water,” he said.
Producers got paid extra for getting gals to melt down on camera, the book charges.
“Scott Jeffress, the show’s supervising producer, described peeling off $100 bills, rewarding producers for special achievements, like getting a girl to cry on camera.”
Staff and crew also boozed and smoked marijuana behind the scenes, says the book.
The author insists boss man Fleiss guzzled “tequila. The cast drank, the crew drank, the managers drank.”
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Executive producer Lisa Levenson told Fleiss, “You had to drink with [contestants] to get them to trust you.”
Meanwhile, Fleiss and Levenson, who were married to others, were claimed to have plunged into a sizzling “open affair.”
“All the field producers talked about how much they were screwing around in the limos,” says the book.