Now accepting roses! Charity Lawson has been named the star of season 20 of The Bachelorette.
At the end of the Women Tell All, which aired on Tuesday, March 14, Jesse Palmer told Charity that she’s got the gig after tricking her with a fake game for The Bachelorette’s social media account.
“Are you kidding? … No way. I’m gonna cry,” she said. “Yes, absolutely [I’ll be the Bachelorette]. 100 percent! … I’m shaking right now.”
The host responded: “In a couple of months, there’s a very good chance that you’re going to be engaged to the love of your life! … Your life really is going to change. It’s never going to be the same. It could not happen to a more deserving person.”
Charity called her parents to tell them the news. “I can’t wait to show little girls that look like me that being in a position like this is possible,” she concluded. “I know that I’ll be making a lot of people proud.”
Fans met the 27-year-old child and family therapist on Zach Shallcross’ season 27 of The Bachelor.
“Charity is the total package! The Georgia beauty takes her name as a call to love and care for people and has built her life on that purpose,” her ABC bio read. “Charity is a mental health therapist and is extremely passionate about helping people live their best lives. Now, she is ready to receive the love she gives to so many others! Charity hopes her future husband is honest, loyal and shares similar morals.”
Zach, 26, sent Charity home after hometowns but told Us Weekly at the Women Tell All taping that he was rooting for her to be the next franchise lead.
“She knows what she wants. She is so confident, she’s so sweet and, you know, she has a great heart,” Zach told Us. “She’s someone from the very beginning that — I don’t know what exactly it was — but [she] was just trustworthy. She was someone that I asked to, like, get her take on things and while there was some drama in the house early, she was always someone that I believed in [and] I trusted it too. She’s a very trustworthy person and I think she would absolutely kill it as Bachelorette.”
Jesse, meanwhile, played coy at the time, telling Us that there were “five or six” women from Zach’s season that could have gotten the job.
“It’s hard because I feel like in past seasons we’ve had an obvious choice, like, two, maybe three [choices]. I feel like this season, there’s five or six that could be tremendous,” he teased in February. “So I’d love to know who it is and whoever it is, I’m sure it’s going to be an amazing season.”
When told that a lot of the season 27 stars have named Charity as their choice, the host added: “I totally get it. I think she’d be awesome.”
Charity makes history as the fourth Black Bachelorette after Rachel Lindsay starred on season 13 and Tayshia Adams took over for season 16 lead Clare Crawley when she left the show early and Michelle Young was the season 18 star. Season 25 star Matt James, meanwhile, remains the first and only Black Bachelor.
The Bachelorette will return to ABC later this year.
