Clayton Echard Says He Sometimes Regrets Agreeing to Be the Bachelor: ‘I Just Wasn’t Ready’

usmagazine.com:

Not always a fairy tale. Clayton Echard confessed that he regretted agreeing to become the Bachelor after seeing fans’ initial reaction to his season.“I think the first three weeks of the show airing, I definitely [regretted saying yes],” the former football player, 28, said during the Monday, February 14, episode of “The Viall Files” podcast. “You just don’t know what to expect going into it.”Clayton had “no frame of reference” for what being the lead entailed after his early exit from Michelle Young‘s Bachelorette season, so he didn’t realize how intense the backlash could become.“[For] the first three weeks, I thought, ‘This is going to be great.

Everyone’s gonna come around. People are really going to start seeing my personality,’ and they just weren’t,” Clayton explained. “It seemed like no matter what they showed … [fans] are still just wanting to find something to be mad at me about.”He continued: “I just wasn’t ready, I guess, for the magnitude of the criticism I was going to face.One of the biggest critiques Clayton has received from Bachelor Nation viewers since season 26 premiered concerns his decision to keep controversial contestant Shanae Ankney amid her feud with Elizabeth Corrigan.

While Shanae, 29, claimed that she was being bullied by the real estate agent, 32, many fans felt that the Ohio native crossed a line when she made fun of her fellow contestant’s ADHD.Clayton kept Shanae and eliminated Elizabeth during the January 31 episode, but he later claimed that he would have acted differently in hindsight.“I would have sent Shanae home immediately for making fun of [Elizabeth] for being neurodivergent, had I known,” the University of Missouri alum wrote via Twitter on February 1. “Overall, the experience