According to Jesse Palmer, the bombshells dropped in the trailer for season 26 of The Bachelor are only the beginning for Clayton Echard.
When asked whether the most shocking thing that went down during production has been teased to the audience, the 43-year-old Bachelor host exclusively told Us Weekly on Tuesday, January 18, “It’s something we don’t know about yet.”
The 28-year-old Missouri native’s teaser revealed he falls in love with at least three women — and tells two of them at a rose ceremony that he was “intimate” with them both of them.
“We have very smart people on the show with respect to what they’re putting out and how they’re editing everything and putting it together, but there are multiple moments that I think are gonna be very, very eye-opening for our viewers at home,” Palmer told Us. “I know we always say, ‘It’s the most dramatic season,’ [but] Clayton’s season [is] the most dramatic season ever and that’s because there’s so many things that have never happened before. As the host, there were moments where I was kind of sitting there going, ‘Whoa, like, ‘This didn’t happen on my season.’ I dunno where we’re going right now.’”
Palmer was the season 5 Bachelor in 2004. He took over for Chris Harrison for the 2022 season of the ABC show.
While there was no new episode of The Bachelor on Monday, January 17, due to the NFL playoffs, Clayton’s journey picks up with him debating whether to take away Cassidy Timbrooks‘ group date rose.
“We’ve got a cliffhanger right now, for sure. Sierra [Jackson] has just informed Clayton that Cassidy may have a ‘friend with benefits.’ Of course, Clayton [has] at this point sort of established a pretty strong connection with Cassidy right out the gate. He obviously just gave her a group date rose, which prompts him to ask me at the end of that last episode, ‘Has anybody ever given a rose back before?’” Palmer recalled. “One thing people need to know about Clayton’s season, in general, is that on The Bachelor, there just are no rules and Clayton is willing to do whatever it takes to find his person. He’s gonna take risks, he’s gonna take chances.”
The former New York Giants quarterback continued: “We’ve already seen a little bit of that in the first couple episodes, but I think fans moving forward — they’ve already seen some of it — but they’re gonna see things on this season that they haven’t seen in 20 years of watching The Bachelor. And we’re sort of at pretty big moment right now with respect to kind of learning about Clayton, and what he’s willing to do moving forward to find his person.”
When asked three words to describe the ending of the season, Palmer teased: “Love, dramatic and shocking.”
The Bachelor airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
