As Joan Vassos makes history as the first “Golden Bachelorette,” she admitted she felt “a little pressure” leading the ABC reality dating franchise.
“I did feel a little pressure, to be honest … I really wanted this to work,” Vassos told TheWrap. “I wanted it to work in a genuine way. I wasn’t going to make it work, so I was really conscious about how I went on this journey, and what I did.”
Vassos, whom Bachelor Nation fell in love with during Gerry Turner’s season of “The Golden Bachelor,” was especially intentional about giving all 24 senior men a shot, saying, “I made sure that I didn’t think … I had a deep connection with somebody right in the beginning, or fall for somebody right away.”
“You give up a lot to come on the show — you give up your families and your home and your job, and you step away from all your comforts,” Vassos said. “I wanted to make sure I dated everybody equally and gave them a really good chance.”
As the first-ever “Golden Bachelorette,” Vassos takes the reins from Turner, the inaugural “Golden Bachelor,” whose dating journey debuted last fall on ABC. Despite narrowing down his final rose pick to Theresa Nist and tying the knot in a “Golden Wedding” special earlier this year, the pair revealed in April they would be getting a divorce.
“I feel like if you do the journey correctly, and you really dive in and have those deep conversations, and you are really honest about what you expect in the end, that you’re going to have a good outcome,” Vassos said.
Luckily, Vassos revealed she is “happy” with the outcome of her journey. “It unfolded just like it should have it,” she said. “Life works out like it’s supposed to, in general.”
The “Golden Bachelorette” will welcome a group of senior men from all walks of life as she begins her journey on the show, many of whom share similar stories to Vassos, who was widowed after her husband of 32 years passed away. “I had some really great men on this season, people that I really connected with,” Vassos said. “When you’ve lived a lot of life, you have a lot of backstories, and so you end up, having things in common that you probably wouldn’t have, maybe when you were younger.”
One of those lucky men is Mark Anderson, the father of Bachelor Nation royalty Kelsey Anderson, who got engaged to Joey Graziadei on the most recent season of “The Bachelor.” Mark, whose wife also passed away, was immediately embraced by fans of the show after being introduced on Kelsey’s hometown date, leading Vassos to have an “inkling” he would be joining the show.
“It’s been teased a little bit — it was even teased on Joey’s finale because he was in the audience and I think Jesse [Palmer] said something about ‘maybe we’ll see you,’ and I don’t know if that was planned or not, but that kind of put the idea in my head that maybe he was going to be there,” Vassos said.
After seeing Mark during Kelsey’s hometown date, Vassos had already thought of him as a “great dad,” and by the time Kelsey appeared at the “Bachelor” mansion to introduce her father, as shown in a preview for the premiere, Vassos said he was “every bit as [she] imagined him to be.”
“I just loved his demeanor with his kids; he got his kids through [a] really hard part of their life, and they all came out really good,” Vassos said. “I wanted to meet him. He’s [the] kind of family guy that I’m looking for and and he was also pretty darn handsome.”
The Andersons won’t be the only familiar “Bachelor” faces showing up on Vassos’ season of “The Golden Bachelorette,” with Vassos confirming “there are a lot of people from Bachelor Nation that stop by this season.”
