Thursday, September 7, 2017

It's Arie! (Yikes...)

Friday morning, update #4: After his big day in the spotlight, Arie is up to 114,000 Instagram followers. He apparently deleted the post I pasted below, here is his most recent post, with over 1,000 comments.
A post shared by Arie 🏁 (@ariejr) on


Update #3: Some juicy dish from Variety about how Arie got the Bachelor gig:

Luyendyk has been away from the spotlight since losing to Jef Holm on Maynard’s season of “The Bachelorette,” and since, he’s been rumored to someday return as “The Bachelor” and was in talks to star in the series a few years back, before ABC chose Chris Soules instead.

… [Peter] Kraus from the most recent season, along with Eric Bigger and Dean Unglert, were also in the running with Kraus emerging as the front runner and in serious contention for quite some time. However, an insider says that Unglert’s young age was a factor in him not being chosen, despite being a fan-favorite. As for Kraus, a source in “The Bachelor” casting says that most women trying out for the upcoming season said they would be most excited about vying for Kraus’ heart, but in the end, ABC wanted to select the right suitor who is “there for the right reasons,” in comparison to the majority of recent cast-offs who have all benefitted from the franchise with endorsement deals and lucrative product placement posts on Instagram.

Wow. As I've said here before, pretty much everyone who goes on this show now, either as a lead or as a contestant, is there to build a brand, gain Instagram followers and generally cash-in on reality TV fame. In order to get cast in the first place, however, they've got to convincingly *pretend* that such unseemly thoughts never entered their pretty little heads. They've got to be able to convince producers that they're really there to find love. You know, they're there for the right reasons. Luke Pell couldn't do it last year and apparently Peter couldn't pull it off this year. Fascinating.

Update #2: I was wrong below, Arie does have a personal Instagram account, with (currently) 80,700 followers. Here's his most recent post:
A post shared by Arie 🏁 (@ariejr) on



Update #1: This is cool.



Original post:
This is big, big news in Bachelor Nation and I admit I'd love to know the backstory, i.e., what really happened with Peter. I'm sure that in a perfect world, Bach producers would prefer not to pick someone who hasn't been seen on a franchise show since 2012. (Arie was the runner up on Emily Maynard's season in 2012.) Word on the street is that Arie came very close to being the Bachelor in 2013 before producers made a last minute change to Chris Soules:

“They actually told Arie he was gonna be the Bachelor,” [former Bachelor Sean] Lowe said. “They flew [him] down, had a camera crew, filmed him telling his family he was gonna be the next Bachelor – then pulled the rug out from underneath him and made Chris the Bachelor.”

But now, it’s Luyendyk Jr.’s turn!

Although things didn’t work out with Maynard, one thing’s for sure: “Not only is Arie a gorgeous man, but he has a heart of gold and he’s a great kisser! Does it get any better than that,” Maynard wrote in her blog for PEOPLE in 2012. (From an article at people.com; read it here.) 

So many questions this morning, rosebuds, it's going to be a crazy day here in Bach Nation! I'll try to keep up with the juicy details as they trickle out. In particular, Peter has *lots* of fans and they are not going to be happy about this. (His most recent Instagram post has 332 comments, I'll check back later to see how his 554,000 followers are reacting.) What about Arie's Instagram? As of this morning I could only find a professional Insta for him, one that promotes his real estate business. Followers? 978. Here's his most recent post, from yesterday:

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