The sick way producers manipulate Bachelor contestants in the US

PRODUCERS who work on the reality show in the US go to extreme lengths to manufacture emotional moments, a new book has revealed.

PRODUCERS on The Bachelor in the US are so focused on getting emotional sound bites, they track the contestants’ periods.

According to Amy Kaufman’s new tell-all book Bachelor Nation, producers “have been known to keep track of when the women in the house are menstruating” so they can interview the lovesick contestants on camera during that time of the month.

“When women cycled together in the house, it created a completely different vibe,” Ben Hatta, a former US Bachelor producer, told Kaufman. “So a girl’s now crying mid-interview about nothing, or being reactionary to things that are super small. It helped the producers, because now you’ve got someone who is emotional — and all you want is emotion.”

He continued: “If a girl’s feeling the butterflies for a guy already, when she gets into that state, her feelings just become more powerful, so she’s probably more willing to tell that guy she loves him. And maybe one of the producers knew she was in that emotional state and was like, ‘You know what? Now’s a better time than ever. You should do it, you should do it, you should do it!’”

Another producer explained that “trust” is key when bonding with contestants on both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.

“The endgame … is getting a contestant to open up. To do that, the contestant must feel like they can trust you,” the former segment producer said.

The full cast of contestants for the fourth season of The Bachelor Australia. The claims made are only about the US version of the show.

Sometimes, according to Kaufman, contestants know exactly what games the producers are playing. Past contestants in the US — Brooks Forester, Sharleen Joynt and Chris Bukowski — all described caving to the pressure of saying what a producer wanted during an in-the-moment interview.

Bukowski, who appeared on the US series and its various spin-offs a record-breaking five times, compared the process to a police interrogation.

“I was saying lines verbatim from producers because I’d been sitting in a stupid room for an hour and just wanted to go,” he told Kaufman. “You would say something you totally didn’t even believe or want to say, but they just keep asking you and asking you and asking you — just like you’re being interrogated.”

US TV network ABC had no comment.

This article was originally published on the New York Post and is reproduced here with permission.