Start filling out your Bachelor brackets! Nick Viall’s season 21 of The Bachelor is premiering on Monday, January 2, 2017, ABC announced on Tuesday, November 1.
The new star of the ABC dating show is looking for love again after calling it quits with Jen Saviano on season 3 of Bachelor in Paradise this summer. Viall, 36, previously vied for Andi Dorfman and Kaitlyn Bristowe’s hearts on seasons 10 and 11 of The Bachelorette but was the runner-up both times.
As Us Weekly previously reported, the Milwaukee native is having better luck this time around. “This season is going very, very well,” an insider told Us. “Like, one of the best seasons ever. Nick is finding love — for real.”
However, host Chris Harrison revealed that Viall hit a few bumps along the way — even having a Jason Mesnick–style breakdown. The season 13 Bachelor famously sobbed over sending home runner-up Molly Malaney, then changed his mind about picking Melissa Rycroft and broke up with her at the After the Final Rose taping in 2009. (Mesnick and Malaney are now married with two children.)
“I will say — a little inside baseball because we’re in the middle of taping right now — he hit a little low point, as all of the Bachelors do,” Harrison said of Viall during a radio interview on On With Mario Lopez. “You kind of reach this emotional bottom where you get stripped down. If you know what a Mesnick is, I will let you know that he pulled a full Mesnick. There will be man tears on this season for sure.”
