The Bachelorette alum Clare Crawley has shot down Zach Shallcross' recent claim that he wasn't allowed to intervene with the women's drama on The Bachelor's 27th season.
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Zach, 26, told Entertainment Weekly earlier this month that producers wouldn't let him step into conflict or solve quarrels between the bachelorettes while The Bachelor was filming.
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"When someone steals you -- I don't know if I can say all of this -- but I gotta keep my mouth shut and let it happen, as much as I can," Zach claimed.
"So, there are times when I want to speak up and be like, 'Oh, yeah. Alright, let's go talk,' but it's for the environment we're in to have it be handled by the women."
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Zach added, "I think my face gives it away a lot on whether I want to be pulled or not. I'm really bad at hiding what I'm feeling, like, so bad. So, I kind of just let it play out."
A fan account titled @bachelornation.scoop shared the clip on Instagram, and Clare -- who starred on the first half of The Bachelorette's sixteenth season in 2020 -- weighed in with her thoughts.
"You don't 'have to' do anything the producers tell you to do," Clare told Zach, before writing in parenthesis, "Just comes with consequences if you don't."
A fan of the show slammed Zach by writing in the comment thread, "You're absolutely right, [Clare]. Sitting back while the 'women work it out' is lazy and cowardly. This is a poor excuse."
But another person defended Zach with the following post: "It's his choice. He's already told us he doesn't like to cause drama. Why do we need to make assumptions and judge? IE lazy and cowardly? He's just doing him."
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Zach has defended his casting in the media by saying he's not about the fame or "clout" and he's actually a funny guy whose personality was not shown on The Bachelorette's nineteenth season last year, when he had competed for Rachel Recchia's heart.
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Zach also recently acknowledged he's "not the dude that's going to cause unnecessary bullsh-t" on the show.
And back in January, Zach told Us Weekly ahead of The Bachelor's Season 27 premiere that fans will love his season as long as they actually want to "see love and no bullsh-t, and not a scene or an act."
Clare didn't respond to a request for more information in terms of what the "consequences" would be if Zach put a stop to drama, but one Instagram user claimed to have heard that a sleep-deprived Bachelor or Bachelorette is given more time to rest if he or she agrees to the producers' demands.
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Clare is one of the strongest examples in the history of The Bachelor franchise of a lead who didn't let the producers tell her what to do.
On The Bachelorette's sixteenth season, Clare determined less than two weeks into the process that Dale Moss was the love of her life, and so she didn't want to date or see relationships through with any of the other bachelors.
Producers therefore gave Clare and Dale an early overnight date, and Dale proposed marriage shortly afterward, seemingly the very next day.
Tayshia Adams was therefore asked to step in halfway through The Bachelorette season, and then fans watched her journey to find love, which ended with Tayshia getting engaged to Zac Clark.
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Both Clare and Tayshia's relationships have since ended.
Tayshia appears to be happily single, although she teased she was dating someone new in January.
And Clare just married the CEO of Mascot Sports, Ryan Dawkins, on February 1 in Sacramento, CA. She and Ryan began dating in late 2021 after her October 2021 split from Dale.
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