Photo: Footballers File Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Against 'The Bachelor' and 'The Bachelorette'
The makers of ABC’s looking-for-love shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette have been slapped with a class-action lawsuit by football players Christopher Johnson and Nathaniel Claybrooks who say the shows racially discriminates.
According to the complaint, Johnson, a former Tennessee wide receiver preparing to tryout for the NFL, and Claybrooks, a minor-league player with the Nashville Storm, accuse Warner Horizon Television, Inc., Next Entertainment, Inc., NZK Productions, Inc., and ABC of “intentional exclusion of people of color from the lead role on ABC’s popular television shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.”
It goes own to claim that “never, over 10 years and a combine total of 23 season of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, has either show ever featured a single person of color – whether African American, Latino, Asian, or any other minority race or ethnicity – in the central role of the The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.
The men say when they auditioned for the show, their interviews were substantially shorter than white auditioners’ with Claybrooks saying he was “rushed through the process.”
In response to the lawsuit, Warner Horizon issued a statement to Deadline saying:
This complaint is baseless and without merit. In fact, we have had various participants of color throughout the series’ history, and the producers have been consistently — and publicly — vocal about seeking diverse candidates for both programs. As always, we continue to seek out participants of color for both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.
