The Disturbing Truth About Crying On The Bachelor

Longtime fans of The Bachelor may not be super shocked to learn that not everything that happens on the show is 100 percent organic. After all, we understand that "reality TV" may be a slightly loose term. For instance, former cast members have revealed producers are influential when it comes to choices the lead makes — if a bachelor or bachelorette is simply too good for ratings, they have to stay through the next rose ceremony!

But what if we told you producers on ABC's hit franchise actually encourage cast members to cry? Think about it. All of the ingredients are there, like tons of alcohol being passed around on dates and at cocktail parties before rose ceremonies. And contestants are competing for the heart of the same person — if that's not a drama generator, we don't know what is! There's more, however. Former Bachelor producer Sarah Gertrude Shapiro told The New Yorker she stirred up cast members' emotions even more than viewers can imagine.

Shapiro reveals her job entailed getting cast members of the show, hosted by the therapist-like Chris Harrison, to "open up, and to give them terrible advice, and to deprive them of sleep." We're crying already! But the manipulation doesn't end there. The former producer adds she would tell certain contestants who were not going through at the next rose ceremony that in fact, the lead was super interested in keeping them around. "The night they were going to get dumped, I would go to the hotel room where they were staying and say, 'I'm going to lose my job for telling you this, but he's going to pick you—he's going to propose,'" Shapiro claimed in The New Yorker interview.

Tears were bound to flow when the opposite happened. And then, as the contestant was riding off set in the limo, Shapiro says she would have a song cued up guaranteed to set off the water works — such as a tune the person felt was "their song" with the lead. She even made herself cry on cue to help elicit tears from the contestant. And Shapiro claims her job depended upon getting the contestant to cry: "They'd often tell us to drive up and down the 405 until the girls cried — and not to come home if we didn't get tears, because we'd be fired."

Of course, getting Bachelor cast members — both male and female — to cry is easier in certain cases versus others. We are all familiar with some of the show's most famous criers, from Ashley Iaconetti, to Colton Underwood. Some of the crying on the show could just be these love hopefuls dealing with a stressful situation in the same way they would off-camera. But former contestants have admitted they were manipulated by producers to shed tears — and sometimes not even about the show, but the footage is edited to look like lost love is the reason for the tears.

For instance, on Ben Flajnik's season, Jamie Otis said, "During my exit interview, a producer asked, 'Don't you miss your family?' and I just lost it.' So, as I'm talking about my family and how I miss them, I'm then asked about how I feel about Ben. I'm crying, and it appears that I'm devastated that Ben didn't choose me" (via Life and Style). The claim that producers get contestants to talk about their personal lives to get them to cry is backed up by a producer who talked to Vice. 

So, the next time you watch The Bachelor, perhaps you'll take all the tears with a grain of salt.