Colton Underwood‘s season ofThe Bachelorhas yet to premiere, but one contestant has already stirred up controversy.
During a press conference call on Thursday, Underwood, 26, addressed the tweets and weighed in on whether the franchise needs to adjust its casting process.
“That’s not up for me to decide, obviously, but as the Bachelor, it’s a good opportunity for me to really get to know these women and form my own opinions of them without really seeing that,” he told reporters.
“While that is a gift and a curse at times, and while I don’t believe in whatever Tracy liked and tweeted at the time, I think that it’s a growing thing,” he continued. “And as far as the process goes, social media is making it a challenge for every workplace. I mean, you’re seeing it all over the world and in our society, things coming up. Everybody has differences in this world. But the bottom line is, that’s not up to me, that’s not my department or anything I need to have an opinion on.”
Jesse Grant/Getty; ABC
Shapoff apologized for her tweets in a lengthy Instagram post on Dec. 7.
“In the many years since writing those tweets I have made a conscious effort not to be judgmental and to be accepting of all people,” she went on.
“I do not defend any of the words I have tweeted, I just want to deeply apologize and learn from my mistakes,” she concluded. “I wholeheartedly reject all of those sentiments.”
Shapoff isn’t the first contestant to make headlines for promoting or posting offensive content on social media. Just days after the premiere ofBecca Kufrin‘s season ofThe Bachelorettelast year, news broke that contestantGarrett Yrigoyen— who went on to win the season — had previously liked a number ofhighly inflammatory Instagram posts, including some that were racist and homophobic.
Yrigoyen apologized for the controversy, both ina statementwhen the initial news broke andagain onAfter the Final Rose,where he said that his openly liberal fiancée Kufrin had “helped me through everything.”
Another of Kufrin’s contestants,Lincoln Adim, wasconvicted of indecent assault and batteryjust ahead of the premiere for groping and assaulting an adult female on a harbor cruise ship in 2016.
“I do know that measures were taken and people were hired to do some deep dives into peoples’ social media and to try to cover our bases as much — as muchmore— as possible,” hostChris Harrisonrecently toldThe HollywoodReporterof what the franchise learned from Kufrin’s season.
“But at the end of the day, we live in a very different world than when the show started 17 years ago,” he continued. “We’re evolving and changing and doing the best you can. But there will be things that come up. You hate to be reactive; you’d love to be proactive. But you can only be so proactive. Stuff is going to happen, so you just do the best you can with the information you have at the time.”
The Bachelorpremieres Monday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
source: people.com
