As Bachelor Nation waited for Clare Crawley’s season of The Bachelorette to start filming amid the coronavirus lockdown, there was far from a lack of drama leading up to production — including the season 16 star throwing shade at Matt James.“If you are doing interviews and creating Cameo accounts before you are even on my season… you are in it for the wrong reasons… #dontwasteyourtime,” Crawley, now 41, tweeted in April 2020, without naming James, who was set to appear on her season.The 30-year-old former Wake Forest football player, who ended up being named the season 25 Bachelor instead of competing for the hairstylist’s affections, addressed the scandal for the first time in his new book, First Impressions.“The sentiment backfired.
On Twitter, Bachelor Nation quickly pounced, rushing to point out the worthy cause our work benefitted,” James, who was on Cameo at the time to make videos for charity with New York Giants’ wide receiver Alex Bachman, wrote in the May 3 release. “I appreciated their support, but it was hard to take any positives away from the tiff.
I hadn’t met Clare, yet I still held out hope that, once the world was back up and running, there might be chemistry for us to discover.”Due to the fact that ABC opted to make James the first Black Bachelor — announcing his casting in June 2020 — he never crossed paths with Crawley, whose season filmed that summer in Palm Springs, California.“I’ve never spoken to her in my entire life,” James told said on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast about his current status with Crawley. “I had nothing to say [when I first saw her tweet].
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