Season 21 of The Bachelorette premieres on ABC July 8. Will star Jenn Tran be glued to her TV?
“Are you kidding me? I’m not going to watch the best two months of my life? Of course, I am!” Jenn said. “I am so excited for it to premiere. I feel like it’s so weird … This crazy journey happened, and I am just so excited to be able to watch it back.”
Jenn competed on Joey Graziadei’s season of The Bachelor but was sent home during week seven. Some fans were confused when host Jesse Palmer announced Jenn as the next Bachelorette during the After the Final Rose special. Though she may not have been the lead fans expected, she will be the first-ever Asian Bachelorette, so I wish her well. She’s a trailblazer.
A surprising choice
Normally, producers choose the next Bachelorette from one of the last girls standing on The Bachelor, so the choice of someone from closer to the “middle of the pack” was surprising. Even I went, “Who?!” when her name was announced. She was totally unexpected.
As Jenn told People in this week’s issue, public reaction to her selection as the Bachelorette has “definitely been a mix.”
“I won’t say that it’s all been positive because racism still exists,” she continued. “I have gotten a lot of hate messages, but along with that, I’ve also gotten so many people who have been so grateful to see somebody like me on their screen. [I’m] grateful and honored that I get to do that for people because growing up, I never had that. I am becoming the role model that I’ve always wanted to see as a little girl.”
“It’s been tough,” Jenn admitted regarding some of the unkind messages she’s received. “I was announced, and then, I … immediately left for filming.”
Per normal show policies, Jenn was without her phone during filming, “so I had no idea what the world was saying until I came back from this amazing experience. I was so excited and so hopeful, and then, I go online and I read a bajillion people’s opinions on everything. That was really disappointing.” Never read your own press, honey. There will always be haters.
Her final goal changed during the season
Despite all the negativity surrounding her selection as the Bachelorette, the physician’s assistant student is pleased with how her season evolved. “I’m very happy … with the way everything panned out,” she shared. She learned along the way that she was there “[to find out] about myself and what I wanted in a relationship. There was so much growth.”
That growth included changing her mind about what she wanted the end of her journey to look like. Does that mean she didn’t choose anyone? Did she pull a Kelly Taylor and say in the end, “I choose me!”
“When you start on the journey, you’re so hopeful for an engagement,” Jenn said. “Then as you go through the journey, it’s like, what [does] an engagement really mean to you? Is it just a ring, or is it a commitment? What I really was looking for was a lasting partner, so I think my definition of that really changed throughout the journey.”
She’s also not putting a timeline on her future. Admitting that when she was younger, she tried to plan at what age she would get engaged, get married, and have kids. But she realizes now life doesn’t work that way.
“Nothing has ever panned out that way,” she confessed. “So I’m just going to take it one day at a time and be hopeful for the future.”
The Bachelorette Season 21 premieres July 8 on ABC.
TELL US – ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO THE BACHELORETTE? DO YOU THINK JENN WAS A GOOD CHOICE?
