The Bachelor’s Clayton Echard has opened up about regretting doing the show following the initial wave of backlash he received.
Clayton revealed he was overwhelmed by the negative comments from viewers for the first three weeks of the show airing before he eventually became numb to the hate messages.
Clayton Echard regretted being The Bachelor after intense backlash
Clayton got real about his doubts on his own season while sitting down with Nick Viall on the Viall Files podcast.
When asked if there was any point where he regretted becoming The Bachelor, Clayton said, “Oh yeah, yeah. I think like the first three weeks of the show airing, yeah I definitely thought that.”
Although Clayton and the franchise were bombarded by criticism from the moment he was announced as the next lead, he assumed that fans would come around after seeing his personality.
“I thought, you know, it’s gonna be great, everyone’s going to come around, start seeing my personality, and it just, people weren’t,” Clayton said. “It seemed like as if no matter what they showed, even when they showed my personality, showed me being goofy, people would say he has no personality, and it’s like, what more do you want to see?”
“It became this hopeless battle of you can’t, you know, you’re not going to make anybody happy,” he said. “I just wasn’t ready I guess, for the magnitude of criticism that I was going to face.”
Clayton Echard was supported by former Bachelors and Bachelorettes
Despite the disheartening start, Clayton said he was comforted by getting reassurance from other Bachelors and Bachelorettes after the show aired.
He had been rushed from Michelle Young’s season to his own so quickly that he hadn’t had a chance to reach out for guidance before he began filming. However, he was able to recognize a lot of common experiences with other leads once they began talking.
He also opened up about going numb to the negativity toward him in the last two weeks.
“The negativity in my inbox is the same thing I’ve seen for the last four or five weeks, and it just doesn’t have the same bite anymore,” Clayton said. “It doesn’t matter at this point to me because I’m happy with the people that I have in my life.”
Clayton Echard’s season is still playing out on viewer screens, so fans will have to wait to find out if one of the people in his life is a current contestant vying for his heart.
Watch the entire interview below.
The Bachelor airs on Mondays at 8/7c ABC.