Every frontrunner in The Bachelor franchise's history has faced the same challenge that Bachelorette Jenn Tran is grappling with now: whittling down 25 suitors to one winner. But that's not even Tran's most difficult job. She had to somehow write down the names of all those people looking for the rose along the way.
After The Bachelorette premiered on July 8, Tran admitted that her memory wasn't great on the first night. She explained on the Girls Gotta Eat podcast that she had help getting through her first rose ceremony. Luckily, there's an old franchise trick for calling out the right names.
"Every few roses, I would go to the producer and say, 'I want to send this rose just so I can remember his name,'" Tran admitted.
It's hard to blame her for struggling. The first night of filming was notoriously long, so in addition to having to remember 25 names, she was sleep-deprived and "paranoid," as Tran told hosts Rena Greenberg and Ashley Heseltine's.
"Honestly, the first night, it was 10 a.m. ... and I was ready for 24 hours," she said.
Tran also noted that she "isn't good at remembering names anymore" and that it would be "crazy" to remember them all.
Time-tested crafting magic
Producers have been helping behind the scenes for years. Former Bachelorette contestant Chris Randone gave some insight into how the rose ceremony works in a September 2020 interview with Us Weekly . He said Becca Kufrin, the leading figure at the time, would nominate three people at a time and drop out between each trio.
"When they came out, she just said three names at a time," he explained, adding, "Three names at a time, it's like stop production, start, stop, start, and then you're like, trying to hold you down facial expression."
This is consistent with what former host Chris Harrison told E! 2009 (Reality Review from Ashley). "Everyone gets nervous at the first rose ceremony, so we made it really easy for them and we split [the shoot] up into three to five people at a time," he explains. "Then we'll stop just to make sure we don't run into any mistakes."
Although it was time-consuming - Landon said it took "forever" - the producers felt it was more "natural". Harrison noted that they preferred the method of putting a microphone to the protagonist's ear or using cue cards.
Of course, the first night is the hardest, so as the season goes on, Jenn may have to rely less and less on producers for help.
