Bachelor Nation collectively cringed on Monday night, when Bachelor star Zach Shallcross proclaimed to the world, “There will be no sex during Sex Week!” And then he had sex.
Everyone’s buzzing about how terribly Zach handled Fantasy Suite Week. Bachelorette alum Wells Adams and his wife, actress Sarah Hyland, had some thoughts to add. Us Weekly has the details.
“OK we’re watching this Bachelor episode and Zach is going around telling everybody that, you know, he’s not going to have sex with anybody during sex week,” Wells wrote on his Instagram Stories. “It’s weird because it’s something that he doesn’t need to do on camera.”
Wells said, “There’s the moment when they close the door, and the cameras go away and he can be like, ‘Hey, listen, I just don’t want to have sex with anybody cuz I don’t want to make things awkward.’ No, it’s awkward because you’re telling everybody on camera!”
Zach stunned host Jesse Palmer when he announced there would be “no sex of any kind” in the Fantasy Suites. He wanted to spend time getting to know the three remaining women — Ariel Frenkel, Gabi Elnicki, and Kaity Biggar without the complications of a physical relationship.
Jesse had serious doubts about whether Zach could actually stick to his vow of abstinence. “[Are] you really gonna be able to pull this off?” he asked. “Because you are gonna be tempted.”
But Zach didn’t feel it was appropriate to be intimate with multiple partners such a short time before an engagement. For the sake of “a happy engagement and a happy marriage,” the Anaheim Hills native would forgo sex in the Fantasy Suite.
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Wells posted an audio clip of Sarah asking, “He tells you that he doesn’t want to have sex with you . . . how do you think she’s going to react to that?” Exactly.
Cue the scene of Ariel getting ready for her date. She was excited to have an entire night with Zach. “Being physical . . . is a big part of loving someone and getting to know them,” the New York native added. Ariel wasn’t happy when she found Zach had removed “sexy time” from the menu, but she took it in stride.
Following the second date with Gabi, Zach guiltily confessed to Jesse that they had done the deed. He told Jesse that he and Gabi had “agreed and wanted to have sex together, and it was very special.”
But Zach felt terrible about breaking his word. He worried the other women would be hurt he’d told them one thing and done another. The tech exec felt compelled to “be honest” with the other women and tell them. Ugh. Zach just didn’t see that maybe the women not knowing would be kinder than hurting them.
The Bachelor in Paradise bartender agreed with me that was a bonehead move. “Now he’s telling Jesse they had sex. Bro, kiss and tell much?? You don’t have to tell anybody! What’s going on here?”
Wells then took to Twitter. He tweeted, “The advice I would have given Zach at the bar: Do Not Kiss And Tell. Especially when millions of people are watching. #TheBachelor.”
Zach has yet to comment on the controversy. I can’t wait until After the Final Rose when the whole incident will surely be addressed. Ariel and Kaity will have some words for him, and I’m sure Gabi will, too.
“A lot of things do change and going into that week, I thought I could basically set up, like, a guideline for myself and a guideline for others to try to make it less messy,” Zach admitted at the Women Tell All taping in February. He added that despite the bumps in the road, he’s “very, very” happy about the end of his journey.
The finale of The Bachelor airs Monday, March 27, 2023, on ABC.
TELL US – HOW DO YOU THINK ZACH’S BEEN AS A BACHELOR? WHO DO YOU THINK WILL BE HIS FINAL CHOICE?
[Photo Credit: Craig Sjodin via Getty Images]
