Spoiler alert! This story reveals the winner of Joey Graziadei’s season of The Bachelor and the next Bachelorette, which were announced March 25.
The Bachelor franchise likes to promote from within, if you will, when it comes to choosing the leads of upcoming seasons — just look at Jenn Tran being named The Bachelorette for Season 21. It’s a good strategy, because Bachelor Nation has already started getting to know the star before jumping full into their love story, so it makes sense that they’d continue that practice with the Golden spinoffs. It was suggested during Joey Graziadei’s March 25 finale that we might be seeing more of Kelsey Anderson’s father Mark, and The Bachelor contestant had a pretty understandable reaction.
Kelsey Anderson got engaged to Joey Graziadei on The Bachelor Season 28 finale, during which host Jesse Palmer spoke to Mark Anderson in the audience, teasing: “I don’t know, maybe we’ll be seeing you some down the road too. That’s all I’m saying.” Many fans took that as a hint that Mark might star on The Golden Bachelor Season 2, and when his daughter was asked for her thoughts on this, she told People:
[My] initial response was traumatized that there were trap videos that people made about my dad. But then I decided to take a step back and I was like, ‘You know what? My dad deserves all of this praise and love. He is an amazing dad, and he was an amazing husband to my mom.’ I think that my dad deserves all the love.
Yeah, seeing "thirst trap" videos of your dad is likely something many of us would find shocking, but if The Golden Bachelor taught us anything with its 69 jokes and Cialis shout-outs, it’s that sex is not just for the young.
Bachelor Nation started to fall in love with Mark Anderson through Kelsey Anderson’s stories about him on The Bachelor. She told Joey Graziadei about her mother’s death in 2018 following a battle with breast cancer and how her dad had put his own grief aside to make sure that she and her siblings were OK.
Respect for the former military police officer only grew when Kelsey and Joey visited New Orleans for Hometown dates and we got to meet Mark Anderson for ourselves. It sounds like he might be intrigued at the prospect of reality TV dating, given the success his daughter had. Kelsey continued:
I think that my dad sees how great Joey and I are together, and he has talked to me about how Joey and I would've never met each other if it wasn't for this show, so he's open to it. My mom always told him that she wanted him to find love if she ever passed away before him, and that she wanted him to be happy and have that partnership after her, so I think that it would be a great push for him to open up to that and to see if he could find love on a TV show.
Since Jesse Palmer didn’t elaborate when he dropped that hint at The Bachelor’s “After the Final Rose” special, it’s unknown if he meant Mark Anderson might be a contestant on the upcoming first season of The Golden Bachelorette or if he’ll follow in Gerry Turner’s footsteps to star on The Golden Bachelor Season 2. If it’s the latter, hopefully he was able to touch base with Turner, who was also in the audience that night, sobbing through the finale with new wife Theresa Nist by his side.
Gerry Turner’s season also featured a Bachelor Nation parent, as Matt James’ mom Patty appeared on The Golden Bachelor as a contestant; however, she failed to receive a rose on Night 1. Hopefully Jesse Palmer won’t keep us in suspense too long with more news from the Golden portion of the franchise. Until then, keep an eye on the 2024 TV schedule for all of the upcoming premieres.
