Yahoo News The Bachelor producers explain how they pulled off that virtual rose ceremony
How do you make The Bachelor without the Bachelor?
That's the dilemma producers faced this season when their lead, Zach Shallcross, tested positive for COVID during the London leg of his "journey" to find "love."
As viewers saw on Monday night's episode, the Bachelor fell ill and was forced to cancel the group date — so the ladies went on a double-decker bus tour of London without him. The following day, host Jesse Palmer delivered the bad news that Zach had COVID and would have to remain in quarantine indefinitely.
Remarkably, it's a problem the franchise never encountered over the last two-plus years, even while filming "bubble" seasons during the height of the pandemic. (Season 25 of The Bachelor was filmed entirely at the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Pennsylvania; and seasons 16 and 17 of The Bachelorette were also shot entirely in one location.)
The news of Zach's positive test presented a crisis for production, which not only has to follow a stringent travel schedule but also must fill two hours of TV every week. Shutting the show down completely simply wasn't an option — nor was it something the Bachelor wanted to do. "Zach was really concerned that he was going to lose time with the women and not be able to further the relationships that had really started to take off," explains executive producer Bennett Graebner. "He was quite adamant that he was not going to send anyone home without spending time with them."
With the clock ticking, the entire production team came together to brainstorm a solution. The result was something that's never been done on any American Bachelor series before: A virtual cocktail party and rose ceremony. But… how? No longer able to use the English castle they'd booked for the cocktail party and rose ceremony, the production had to figure out creative solutions — fast.
Pulling off Monday night's virtual extravaganza involved on-the-fly technical improvisations, logistical puzzles, and a significant AV assist from the Bachelor himself. After watching Monday's episode — in which Zach chatted with the women one-on-one via iPad during the "cocktail party," and then offered roses from a wall-mounted TV monitor during the rose ceremony — we had a lot of questions. Fortunately, Graebner, exec producer Nicole Woods, and director Dave Miller had the answers.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I'll start by saying congratulations — it is pretty impressive that this franchise has gone two years and six seasons without a lead ever getting COVID. How often were Zach and the contestants being tested throughout filming?
NICOLE WOODS: We test them daily. Every morning.
When you guys found out Zach had COVID, what happened next? Did you immediately set up a war room to plan your next course of action?
BENNETT GRAEBNER: We've certainly done a lot of testing over the past few years, both for those in front of the camera and behind the camera. And as everyone knows, there are false positives. Obviously, we were a little surprised, shocked, concerned, not just for the future of the television show, but for the wellbeing of Zach and any other cast. Our first order of business was making sure that Zach didn't leave his room, and that we continued to retest him to make sure that the results were accurate.
WOODS: We definitely ran two tests. Usually, I get the first text message from our doctor, and then I sent a text message to Bennett and the other EPs. Then we drop everything and get together and are like, "Okay, what do we do?" We sit down and we just start throwing ideas at the wall.
GRAEBNER: It's incredibly challenging, trying to figure out how to continue making the television show. The other concern was one that Zach voiced pretty quickly: He was really concerned that he was going to lose time with the women and not be able to further the relationships that had really started to take off. I really give him credit for that. Like, he didn't say, "Oh, I'm really bummed out. I don't get to see London." He was really upset and concerned over how much time he would potentially be missing if he continued to test positive, knowing that he'd likely be stuck in his room for five days.
We had to prepare for any scenario moving forward. We knew that if we got confirmation of his positive results, that would mean a five-day quarantine period where we really couldn't shoot with him physically. There was also no guarantee that we'd be able to shoot after those five days. We got together, and Nicole, I want to say you had option A, option B, option C, option D, and option E in terms of what we could do, when we could shoot, what we could shoot, how we could shoot it. I remember sitting there with a bunch of calendars, and there were arrows and highlighters, simply trying to figure out how to get things done. Meanwhile, we're having conversations with a very disappointed and despondent Bachelor who's stuck in his room, and really the only way to communicate with him was on the hotel phone.
Nicole, can you give us an idea of what options A through E were?
WOODS: Well, the original timeline for COVID quarantine was 10 days. So, if we're following our guidelines, it could be up to 10 days of quarantine for him if he continued to test positive. The good news is that it was different in [Zach's] situation than it was on the first season we did with COVID. Now there are the new parameters of, like, on day six, if you have no symptoms, you can probably go out into the world. But we were under strict rules from the studio and the unions and all that — so one of those options was a 10-day scenario. It was probably option E, because that was the least desirable for all of us. In times like that, your brain is just firing on adrenaline to try to solve the problem. It was, best-case scenario, he's clear on day six.
GRAEBNER: We were locked into a production calendar. We know exactly where we're traveling and when we're traveling. The next location, we have it booked — we're showing up on this day, we have this many rooms at this hotel. And the same is true for where we are in London. So, it's not as simple as like, "Oh, we'll just wait it out and we'll continue to shoot." We somehow have to get to the next location or we're going to find ourselves in a lot of trouble when it comes to our bookings. That was part of the struggle.
WOODS: And we're also trying to figure out, how do we fill the TV show if we're just sitting idle for six days? What do we do with the women? And there's also there's fear of, "Oh my gosh, he was just kissing Gabi last night. What if she gets COVID?" We got really lucky that it didn't spread amongst the entire cast of women.
GRAEBNER: Gabi had a roommate, and I believe we removed her roommate and gave her her own room and tried to limit her contact with the other cast to some extent. We tested Gabi multiple times in the following 48 hours after that. Part of it was luck, Nicole, but some of it is due to the fact that we had a fully vaccinated cast, a fully vaccinated staff, and so we prophylactically protected ourselves in that way.
How did the idea of a virtual cocktail party and rose ceremony come about?
GRAEBNER: Talking to Zach, he was quite adamant that he was not going to send anyone home without spending time with them. The options were limited, and I believe it was [Disney/ABC exec] Rob Mills who said, "We should do a virtual cocktail party and a virtual rose ceremony." In full disclosure, I thought it was a bad idea, and I told him. I said, "I really don't think this is a good idea." He said, "Why? What are you so worried about?" What I was worried about was that, here we are two-and-a-half years into a pandemic, where people are just so fatigued by looking at people interacting on screens. We have to project forward five months later to when this airs, and I think people will be even more fatigued and less interested in seeing people communicate on screens. I wasn't supportive of it for that reason.
I was also concerned that when we put it together, it just wouldn't look like The Bachelor. It wouldn't look like the production that we know and love. To be frank, I thought it might look embarrassing. I remember telling Rob that, and he said, "Well, let's give it a shot." So, we sat down in a large group with our tech department, our audio department, our lighting department, our director here, to try to figure out how we would get it done — knowing that we couldn't even get into Zach's room. It's not like we can send in a bunch of people, and they can set up things. I mean, the guy had to set up everything on his own, with our assistance over the phone. But he really did it all himself because he had to.
ABC Zach gets the AV set-up going in his room on 'The Bachelor'
DAVE MILLER: As we spread the plan amongst the crew, everyone had to get the giggles out for a second, and then snap back into, "Okay, how do we do this?" The first reaction was like, it feels like we're shooting an SNL skit or something. Let's not let it become that.
There were many different turns that we could have taken where it would've gone into parody. And I think we found the next best thing. Like, if we can't have two people in the room talking to each other, how do we create the best version of that virtually? Let's have the girl on an iPad so she can hold him in her hands. That's a simple decision that we're all used to, because we use iPads, we use phones, we hold each other's faces in our hands all the time.
But as a TV show, we started going down the path of, okay, how do we set up a camera and how do we send that camera signal down the hallway to his room? Do we have the women sit at a monitor [during the conversations]? No, that felt weird. That's like the 2001: A Space Odyssey version of this where you're using a video phone to call home. That's contrived and stale. We went, "Wait a minute. The technology exists. People are used to it. It's a language people understand. So, let's just have the girls hold an iPad — so they can kiss the screen. Okay. That's good."
Did you ever consider trying to replicate a typical cocktail party where, like, Zach's on a table on an iPad, and all the women are in the room together chatting with him?
MILLER: We did do a version of that. The ladies were all sitting in the living room, and then we had one room designated to be the one-on-one room, with the iPad on the couch. It's important for these one-on-one conversations to happen in private, so the other ladies aren't listening in on everyone's conversation — unless they get a little bit nefarious about it.
When you're FaceTiming with somebody or Zooming with somebody, there's a little picture of you in the corner, so you can look at yourself and make sure you're smiling or whatever. My first thought as a director was, I don't want to see the lady's face in every shot of Zach. We would end up with what we call the "non-clean listening shot." It would always have her in the frame, and it'll always have him in the frame, and that's not very useful to the editors. So out of necessity, I was like, let's get rid of that [picture-in-picture] screen. The ladies aren't going to be able to see themselves, but that's fine, that's better — they're not going to be looking at themselves and making sure their makeup's right. They're just going to be looking at him. That felt right. You don't look in a mirror when you're talking to somebody. This is supposed to be a one-on-one conversation where they're paying attention to each other and not distracted.
ABC Zach Zooms with the ladies on 'The Bachelor'
We quickly realized that if they didn't see themselves, then they couldn't frame themselves nicely. But we have a camera on them. We're filming the lady in the room, getting a beautiful shot of her, so maybe we don't need that shot [of her on the iPad screen]. We're not in the room with our Bachelor, so anything we get from his point of view is a bonus.
In terms of the rose ceremony, you filmed it in a hotel room, which I'm sure wasn't the original plan. What was the reasoning behind that?
WOODS: We had this beautiful off-site rose ceremony location that we had started loading into that we were supposed to use for shooting. But we had no choice but to shoot it at the hotel, which was like a bustling business hotel in the center of London. But because we had the women's suite already available, we were able to make that space work for us because we couldn't move Zach. That was also part of a dilemma for us — we have a rose location, but how do we actually do it there with Zach stuck in quarantine?
MILLER: I don't even remember what the castle was called, but it was a beautiful, beautiful space. And they didn't have WiFi, so it was just a logistical thing right off the bat. Like, do you move all the ladies out there and then you're just basically on iPads and stuff? That felt wrong too, like a television show getting in the way of what people would normally do. The call to do it in the hotel where everyone already was — it's weird and it's not the show normally, but it was the best idea.
ABC The ladies during a virtual 'Bachelor' rose ceremony
And were there other scenarios you entertained in terms of how Zach would "be" in the room? I'll admit I was really hoping Palmer would walk in holding a laptop with Zach on the screen.
MILLER: The iPad or the computer felt too small, like they couldn't see him in the same way that they can see him if he's standing in front of them. It's 10 feet or so between the ladies and the podium anyway in a rose ceremony. To stick to the format of the show, it felt important that they could see his face from where they were standing and that he could see them. Trust me, my sense of humor, I would love to have made the SNL version, a hundred percent. I would've had [stage manager] Paulie Danner wheel Zach in with his face on the monitor.
All the goofy ideas came out of me, and I got the giggles out. Then we moved on to, what is not going to be silly? And that was just putting the monitor there and having a black screen. It's funny how difficult simple things are when you're not in a studio [setting]. In a studio, going from a black screen to a picture on the screen is a simple, simple ask. But we were in London, we had no idea we were going to do this, and we had what we had and no time to figure much out.
Finally, we had a guy in the back of the room with a remote control for the TV, you know? And you see the menu come up and it says like, "Input 1" or whatever, and then it goes away because there's a backspace button on the remote. So, that guy was turning the TV on and then pushing backspace so the menu would go away fast enough. And that was an important moment, because that's the equivalent of Zach walking in and seeing the ladies for the first time. They were already in the room, and then he has to arrive.
GRAEBNER: So many of these things that we take for granted that are effortless when we're shooting with everyone in person became really difficult. I'll give you an example: The handing out of the roses, we discussed that at length. Does Zach also have roses in his room? Does he hold up a rose on the monitor and then the woman says, "Yes, I'll accept the rose," but she's taking another rose [off the tray] and you're trying to match the action. Or is that just ridiculous? So you're trying to figure out what looks and feels best but also isn't like Max Headroom.
ABC Zach has entered the chat
You had to squeeze 11 women into a much smaller space than usual for that rose ceremony. What was the biggest challenge in getting those shots?
MILLER: Kudos to the art department and the lighting team on this one. That's the same room they were all sitting in earlier, and we went in and redressed it, and the art department came up with some things. We never ever, ever would put the lady standing six inches away from the wall. It just isn't done. We scout places on purpose that are big and have a nice, soft background and are beautiful. We had to light with LED strips, like we were lighting on a boat or something.
I cannot stress enough, the tech department, the lighting department, the audio department, the art department — every department, their expertise just shined on this one. They figured it out and they did it quickly and they did a great job. I mean, it's the best job that could be possibly done.
Can you tell us anything about the date Charity was supposed to have with Zach?
GRAEBNER: We were all very sad, especially because it was going to be an amazing date with a helicopter ride over the city. There was more to it than that, but it was an incredibly romantic date, and she was obviously very upset and very sad, and so was Zach.
Zach was pretty clear that the next date, whenever he was better and could see the women, would be with Charity. For some reason, the women didn't put that together, and they were kind of surprised when Charity got the next date. I was like, "How can you be surprised? Of course, she's going to get the next date!" But they were, and so was Charity.
ABC Zach and Charity on 'The Bachelor'
In the past, leads have been sick and still had dates in some form. Rachel Lindsay had a one-on-one date with Jack when she was sick; Hannah Brown had a one-on-one date with Connor in her hotel room when she was sick during her season…
GRAEBNER: Yes, and on Ali's season, she got sick, and Chris came to her room with soup. Emily was very sick in London during her season; she lost her voice. We've had these issues in the past.
What is the protocol now in the COVID era when your lead is under the weather? If a Bachelor or Bachelorette wakes up in the morning with a sore throat or some other COVID-related symptoms but they test negative, can they go out on a date?
WOODS: I feel like we've been really lucky to not have to be faced with that decision. As you can imagine, lack of sleep, lack of nutritional food, exhaustion, all of that can also make you feel run down and give you symptoms that could be COVID symptoms. In the bubbles, I really don't feel like we were faced with that. It will be interesting moving forward how we handle that, but we really rely heavily on the testing.
GRAEBNER: It would be hard to shut down production if the lead's not feeling well simply because, as Nicole mentioned, we have a pretty grueling schedule. The lead is often slightly sleep-deprived, so that would be tough if every time the lead didn't feel well, we shut things down.
What can you tell us about next week's episode?
GRAEBNER: Charity does finally get her date, and it's beautiful and romantic, and it's everything that she'd wanted and hoped for in London.
The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.
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