Re: Matt James & Rachael Kirkconnell - Bachelor 25 - Discussion

by bluwavz Wed May 05, 2021 3:12 pm

https://www.instagram.com/p/COgAH-SMDxi/

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/matt-james-bachelor-profile-rachael-kirkconnell-11620231869

by chasus71 Wed May 05, 2021 9:29 pm

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rachael (@rachaelkirkconnellupdates)

Rachael (@rachaelkirkconnellupdates) • Instagram photos and videos

by **GuardianAngel** Wed May 05, 2021 9:43 pm

I can't read the WSJ, it's behind a paywall.

Was it directly quoted by Matt and Rachel that they are together? I don't see anyone else reporting it.

by chasus71 Wed May 05, 2021 9:44 pm

Below is a snippet from the IG post about the article from WSJ. Magazine (@wsjmag) • Instagram photos and videos

"wsjmag

Verified

@mattjames919 and @rachaelkirkconnell have confirmed that they are back together. ⁠⁠
⁠
James doesn’t want to speak for Kirkconnell, however, about what she’s doing to be a more sensitive partner. “I think the best way to put it is that we can have critical conversations about being in this relationship and what I need in a partner—especially if that woman isn’t Black—to understand what comes with me and my life and being Black,” he says. ⁠
⁠
“It’s on people who care about being allies to do the work to be truly antiracist,” James says. “And I think it’s unfair to leave people without the ability to unlearn and be better.” Read the interview at the link in bio. (

️: @laneflorsheim,

: @cliffordprinceking) ⁠"

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by WSJ. Magazine (@wsjmag)

by chasus71 Wed May 05, 2021 9:58 pm

The article below from the actual link to the Article (very long):
For ‘Bachelor’ Matt James, the Power of a Second Chance - WSJ

"One day shortly after his season of The Bachelor was done filming, Matt James laced up his running shoes and ran 17 straight miles.
He was visiting California and wasn’t even sure why he’d brought his sneakers. At the time, he hadn’t been running. “I felt so much angst and pressure and life weighing on me,” he says. “No stretching, no training—I just ran until I got tired. That was therapeutic for me, and it was horrible for my body.”

When ABC named the former Wake Forest wide receiver as its new Bachelor last June, it made James the first Black male lead in the franchise’s 18 years and 25 seasons. The announcement came just days after a petition called on ABC and Warner Bros., which produces the Bachelor franchise, to cast a Black bachelor—and as demonstrations following the police killing of George Floyd rocked the country.
“We know we have a responsibility to make sure the love stories we’re seeing onscreen are representative of the world we live in,” ABC Entertainment’s then-president Karey Burke said in a statement at the time. “This is just the beginning.”

But controversy erupted in the aftermath of James’s season. Chris Harrison, the longtime host, has stepped aside. The season’s post-finale special—usually an upbeat recap that includes bloopers—was instead a racially charged mediation session, hosted by Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man author Emmanuel Acho. Rachel Lindsay, the show’s first Black lead, said last week she will step away from the franchise after online abuse. (Lindsay did not return requests for comment.) Even other ABC hosts have commented on the show’s struggles.
Harrison stepped aside after defending contestant and eventual winner Rachael Kirkconnell, who was accused of past racist behavior including posing for photos in antebellum costume. Harrison later characterized his remarks as dismissive of racism; Kirkconnell, who is white, apologized in a post to Instagram: “I am ashamed about my lack of education, but it is no one’s responsibility to educate me.”

At ABC, no further decisions have been made regarding Harrison’s role in the franchise, says a person familiar with the discussions. (Harrison did not return requests for comment.)During an interview in late April, James, 29, was sitting on a couch on the terrace that wraps around Soho House West Hollywood, looking over downtown Los Angeles. He was dressed more casually than the fitted suits and autumnal knitwear he wore on the show, wearing a Stanford long-sleeved T-shirt, a beanie and his now-trademark post-Bachelor beard.

“I have spoken to therapists—I wouldn’t say I have a specific therapist,” he says. “As you talk about things, that’s when the healing can start.”
Despite their very public breakup, James and Kirkconnell are now trying to make their relationship work. He doesn’t want to speak for Kirkconnell, however, about what she’s doing to be a more sensitive partner. “I think the best way to put it is that we can have critical conversations about being in this relationship and what I need in a partner—especially if that woman isn’t Black—to understand what comes with me and my life and being Black,” he says.

“It’s on people who care about being allies to do the work to be truly antiracist,” James says. “And I think it’s unfair to leave people without the ability to unlearn and be better.” In an email to WSJ., Kirkconnell confirmed they’re back together, saying it’s been helpful to have privacy as the couple moves forward off-camera.

Unlike most Bachelor and Bachelorette leads, James had not only never appeared on the show as a previous contestant—he’d never been on reality television at all. Before the show started filming, he worked as a commercial real estate associate in Manhattan. And unlike the typical post-Bachelor trajectory, which for many previous contestants is a life of tequila endorsements, shirtless Instagram selfies and appearances on other Bachelor franchise shows, James has turned to a slew of business projects, from NFTs and cryptocurrency to sustainable agriculture. He is a minority owner in the hydroponics company Lettuce Grow, which sells hydroponic “farmstands,” self-watering towers that customers use to grow produce at home. He also runs ABC Food Tours, a charity for underserved kids James founded with Tyler Cameron, his close friend from their football days at Wake (and himself an alum of The Bachelorette). (ABC stands for Alphabet City; there’s no association with the network.)

He wants to use NFTs to teach financial literacy to kids, he says, and that while people of color have historically missed out on new economic frontiers, “I don’t want that to be the case with crypto.”

Going into The Bachelor, James wanted potential partners to understand the parts of his life that weren’t picture-perfect. He grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he and his older brother John, a musician, were raised by his mom, Patty. His dad, Manny, mostly wasn’t in the picture; Manny and John both spent time in jail, the family confirms. James was, as far as he’s aware, the first man in his family to attend college, and says he’s only recently become aware of how shaped he was by people outside his immediate family: friends’ families who took him on vacation or to nice restaurants, or the high school coaches who pushed him to continue his education when he wasn’t planning to.
Telling friends—let alone women he was dating—about his dad and brother used to be out of the question, he says. He was ashamed. “I felt like I had to present myself in the best light,” he says. “I didn’t want to bring mistakes [made by] people I loved, but that I didn’t have control over…into a relationship with someone.”

But opening up had become imperative over time, especially when it came to finding a relationship on The Bachelor. “What was most important to me was that people [on the show] understood where I came from and who I was so that they could make an informed decision for themselves—if they wanted to be with someone like me, who had this quote-unquote baggage, because that’s what I saw it as initially,” he says. “It wasn’t until I became more comfortable with who I was as a man, as a Black man, as a brother and a son, that it just became more of my story.”

Conversations he had with the women around this part of his life didn’t end up making it into any of the season’s episodes in a significant way. James is diplomatic, however, when it comes to the show’s editing. “Ultimately The Bachelor’s about more than myself,” he says. “It’s about all the women who were there and their journeys. There’s a lot of things that didn’t make air that you’ve just got to hope that they knew a lot better than I do—because they’ve been doing this, some of them, longer than I’ve been alive.”

Despite how it appeared, James also says he did not have sex with any of the women during the show’s famous “fantasy suite” nights. He says he used the time to talk with finalists Kirkconnell, Michelle Young and Bri Springs. “I can’t speak for anybody but myself, but I think the women appreciated it,” he says. “Because I did learn things about them that I hadn’t gathered—that I don’t think I would have learned if I hadn’t used that time to really dive deeper into something that they might not have been comfortable talking about on camera.”
“It’s on people who care about being allies to do the work to be truly antiracist. And I think it’s unfair to leave people without the ability to unlearn and be better.”
— Matt James

For his part, friend and co-founder Cameron says he stopped watching James’s season after the first three episodes.
“I wanted to see more Matt,” says Cameron, 28, who was the runner-up on Hannah Brown’s season of The Bachelorette, and whose late mother originally nominated James for the franchise. “That’s why I didn’t watch as much as I wanted to. The Bachelor should be about the lead. I want people to see Matt’s story and then Matt’s fun side, goofy side, the side that we all love. I think the best part of Matt was what we saw in the bloopers”—the few-second snippets that run during each episode’s credits.
The way James replied to the women on the show—who were often confessing their feelings for him or telling him about their most painful life experiences—was sometimes mocked on social media for being repetitive: “I like that,” “I feel that.” The last thing runner-up Young said to him was, “I hope you come up with more phrases than just, ‘Thanks for sharing.’”

In person, James is more easygoing and funny than he ever seemed on the show. He gets animated when he’s talking about something that excites him, like his favorite musical artist (J. Cole) or the first time he visited New York City—he says he didn’t sleep for 72 hours because it was so stimulating. At one point during an interview, he used two glasses of water to demonstrate how NFTs work.
Despite questions around the show’s future and its format, James says he sees the franchise lasting “long after I’m gone.” But he believes it’s important for The Bachelor’s behind-the-cameras storytellers—the editing crew and producers who shape the arcs and help draw out contestants, infamously satirized in the scripted series Unreal—to be just as diverse as the contestants are. (The franchise will not end after The Bachelorette, and announcements about future seasons are forthcoming, says a person familiar with the matter.)
“If you have different people of color all across the board, it’s going to help you tell a story that’s more representative,” he says. “If someone has never…been with someone who doesn’t look like them, they’re going to have a hard time.”

In response to this and a number of inquiries from WSJ., ABC provided part of a previously released joint statement with Warner Bros.: “As we continue the dialogue around achieving greater equity and inclusion within The Bachelor franchise, we are dedicated to improving the BIPOC representation of our crew, including among the executive producer ranks.”
After The Bachelor wrapped, James spent a lot of time with Cameron and other friends. He prayed and realigned himself with God: “Whenever my relationship with Him gets off course, then I feel like everything in my life gets off course.” He started training to run a marathon. He sought support from his men’s Bible study group and a group of friends he met on Martha’s Vineyard in Oak Bluffs, one of the first places in the country where Black people owned their own land. He’s continuing to educate himself on the United States’s history of racism, citing Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book We Were Eight Years in Power, which he’s read and reread in the months since the show wrapped.

He also counts his family as part of his support system, saying their relationships were strengthened by the show. His mom appeared on a few of the episodes, including the season finale in which she and his brother John met Kirkconnell and Young. (Patty James cried happy tears during both of the meetings.) James’s father was also brought on, more controversially, in a painful conversation where he and Matt tried to reconcile.

“The conversations I had with my mom, my brother and my dad weren’t in vain,” James says. “After the show, I reached out to my Pops, and we talk on a regular basis now. He’s taken steps to make amends with the rest of the family and be a better dad to his kids.”

His brother and father, too, have repaired their relationship following James’s on-screen reconciliation with Manny, who now works for a shipping company. In a phone call, John confirmed the repair, saying that he and his father hadn’t spoken for about three years prior to the show. Manny says, “[The show] was the greatest thing that ever happened to me…. Putting the family back together.”
“I know there was a lot of controversy,” says James, “but there were a lot of things to celebrate.”

by **Sprite** Wed May 05, 2021 10:32 pm

@chasus71 Thank you for the great article. I wish we got more of this and less of the stupidity we did with the mean girls. I am glad that no matter what happens with his relationship with Rachel, the show helped his whole family heal.

by chasus71 Wed May 05, 2021 10:57 pm

@Sprite You are welcome

I agree with you and wished that the show spent more time showing this side of things instead of all the mess.

by albean99 Thu May 06, 2021 1:09 am

That was an interesting read. I wish Matt & Rachael well.

Still not liking his beard (needs shaping and trimming) but I wonder if it was a way to disassociate himself from being the Bachelor?

by **Norcalgal** Thu May 06, 2021 3:02 pm

I find it interesting that the first interview Matt has done after filming was with the WSJ. Strategy to focus on business interests and leave entertainment in the dust?

Patty has my renewed respect. I'm happy for her that as stressful as it must have been to see Matt go through so much controversy, her family is closer now. Just in time for Mother's Day.

And good luck to Matt and Rachael - no sarcasm intended.

by provenceguy Thu May 06, 2021 3:46 pm

https://people.com/tv/matt-james-says-he-didnt-have-sex-during-bachelor-fantasy-suites/

by **GuardianAngel** Thu May 06, 2021 9:45 pm

@chasus71 thanks for the article! I'm so happy to hear all is well with Dad and family!

I wish everyone good luck moving forward!

by chasus71 Thu May 06, 2021 11:00 pm

@GuardianAngel You are welcome.

At the end of the day these are real people no matter what and I dont wish any ill will to anyone. So I do hope both much love and happiness with the family they have around them to support them.

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