While rumors of producer interference in Bachelor Nation are nothing new, Lacey Mark is providing new insight into their impact and tactics during an appearance on the Behind the Velvet Rope podcast.
“There’s all these rumors floating around that like the top 10 is predetermined before they even finished casting and things like that,” the contestant from Nick Viall’s season of The Bachelor explained. “Which I would believe a 100%, especially based on seeing, like, how the producers work behind the scenes when you’re actually there.”
She used her castmate, Alexis Waters, as evidence. As she recounted, “Alexis Waters slept through an entire day, an entire cocktail party and just like woke up for the Rose ceremony and got a rose. … It’s predetermined.”
While Waters stuck around through week five, Mark left in the second week, appearing to be eliminated on the show. She claimed every contestant has an “out clause” where they could choose to leave at any time.
So, when she decided she was not interested in Viall, she pulled a producer aside and asked to leave.
“And they were like, ‘Do us a favor,’” she explained. “I’m like ‘What?’ They’re like, ‘You’re getting eliminated tonight. Can you just stay so we can see when you get eliminated instead of having to create a whole nother storyline of you quitting?’”
And like that, she was eliminated in the rose ceremony.
Mark Believes She Was ‘Filler Cast’
Mark described another scenario where producers could have tried to convince her to stay, but believes she was just “filler cast.”
As she explained, she did not have a big personality and was not trying to become an influencer after the show.
“There was a lot of interviews that I wasn’t in on,” she described. “They never really, like, focused on me at all. And like, there were times where I did have alone time with Nick, albeit like again two and a half minutes, but there were times where I had alone time with Nick where like, it wasn’t even filmed. So I was like, ‘Hmm.’”
Mark Claimed Producers Tried to Get Her to Cry in Her Exit Interview
During her exit, Mark did not get particularly emotional. Not all that shocking since she claims she chose to leave.
“They did an exit interview and they were desperately trying to get me to cry,” she explained. “I was like, ‘It’s not going to happen.’ And I was like, ‘I really don’t care that I’m leaving right now.’”
Mark’s claims are in line with other former contestants.
Mark Claims She Was on a Group Date Built Around Her Insecurities
Producers get to know contestants during the casting process and the period of time when they were “in the hotel alone” before filming.
During this time, she said they would try “to find little like nuggets and things that they can use against you or for you at some point throughout your journey.”
What “nugget” did they try to use against her? She felt she was “always the bridesmaid, never the bride.”
So when the group date recreated a wedding, she was of course a bridesmaid.
The contestants were partnered up to fit different themes. The New York native was a “traditional bridesmaid, which is so not my style.” She continued, “They put me in the ugliest purple bridesmaid’s dress, like this heinous thing, this ponytail. And I had to, like, be Danielle’s bridesmaid while she married Nick. And like, these are the things that they do. They get to know your nuances so that they can use them.”
Still, she would go on to appear on Bachelor in Paradise and have a short-lived romance with Daniel Maguire. “Like on Bachelor in Paradise, I told them I was afraid of horses. So they made me go on a horseback riding date to see if I worked out, because if I freaked out that’s good TV.”
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