Chris Harrison is making a return to reality TV — but this time, he won’t be greeting contestants looking for love at the Bachelor mansion. Instead, he’s serving as a mentor and host on Fox Nation’s brand-new dating show: The Vow.
“We’ll see if it’s the right time [to come back to TV],” Harrison, 55, exclusively quipped to Us after The Vow’s season 1 premiere on Wednesday, November 11. “Hopefully, we figure out that everybody — millions and millions and millions of people — are watching The Vow and they love it. Then it’ll be the perfect time to come back.”
Harrison cocreated and coexecutive produced The Vow with his wife, former Entertainment Tonight host Lauren Zima, after feeling like there was a “cultural shift” with a generation “going to church more than their parents.” And dating apps are “going by the wayside,” Harrison said of his perspective on this modern day dating transition.
“Clearly, they’re saying something, and we’re listening,” Harrison said. “And it’s like, ‘OK, can you find love in this modern world? What does it look like?’ Those are the questions we’re kind of asking with The Vow.”
The Vow follows 30-year-old Jace Cates setting out to find love with 10 women (Bachelor Nation fans will remember contestant Kylee Russell), who all share one value: their faith. And as Jace explores his connections with the group, he’s encouraged to have organic moments — rather than potentially artificial ones for the sake of the show.
“We kept saying, ‘We want to create the most authentic, intentional dating show ever,’” Harrison explained. “OK, well to do that, every kind of wall we hit, we’re like, ‘Oh, we got to remove that. That’s an elimination ceremony. That’s kind of contrived. It’s produced and it’s forcing Jace into moments that aren’t real. Get rid of it. So trinkets, hiding behind something. Nope. Get rid of it. Fantasy suites. Get rid of it.’ So honestly, we kind of kept swiping and swiping at these things.”
From a producer’s perspective, Harrison admitted that removing the elimination ceremonies was “scary” since they do give “set moments in time” for viewers. However, Harrison emphasized that The Vow hopes to feature “an intentional story about love,” meaning: “We got to let them do it.”
“When it’s time to break up, either the ladies or Jace, then you have to sit down and have a conversation. It’s what a gentleman should do. It’s what people should expect, and if nothing else, I also want The Vow to kind of raise the level of what’s expected out there in this world. You don’t get to hide behind a trinket,” he continued. “You don’t get to text somebody or ghost them and just make it go away. That’s not what real intentional people of morals do.”
And one of the other contrived moments Harrison and the team decided to do away with is overnight dates — or, as the Bachelor Nation world calls it, “fantasy suites.”
“It was a day-to-day conversation with Jace, and there was a lot of that as a producer of, ‘What do you need? What are you looking for today? Who do you need to hear from? What conversations need to be had?’” Harrison recalled. “And if he had come to us and said, ‘You know what, I really need an overnight date.’ Then what we would have said is, ‘OK, then you need to go have a conversation with whoever it is you’re interested in. If that’s how it goes, we’ll facilitate that.’ There were times when we had things planned, and because of what Jace needed, we did a 180 and we went the other direction. And so, who’s to say we won’t do that?”
While Harrison has decades of experience with hosting duties, he opted to take more of a backseat approach with his role and appear as self-described “advisor” on Jace’s journey to find love.
“I think people kind of looking to the typical Chris Harrison role as host, you’ll see some of that. Some of the things may be familiar, but it will be more of advisor and friend and confidant,” he said. “It’s not standing there at the ceremony, saying a line that I made famous for 20 years over and over and over, until you want to throw a shoe at your TV to make it stop.”
He continued, “Instead, it is just being there when he needs, and more of as an executive producer behind the scenes. And when we saw, ‘Hey, Jace needs a little nudging, he needs a little sit down, he needs a little talk.’ That’s when I kind of inserted myself. As a host, I would have been mad at the executive producer because they’re not using me enough. But I have no one to blame but myself, I guess. Or my wife, who coexecutive produced.”
Harrison, who exited the Bachelor franchise in 2021 after controversial comments supporting former contestant Rachael Kirkconnell, encouraged viewers to see for themselves “how romantic, how beautiful and how authentic” The Vow is as a show. (Since Harrison departed from the Bachelor franchise and launched The Vow, Warner Bros has sent a cease-and-desist letter claiming the Fox Nation teaser used the studio’s intellectual property without authorization. Harrison has since pushed back on this idea.)
“With smaller numbers, no ceremonies, no trinkets, no fantasy suites — eliminating everything that gets in the way of these people truly finding love. It’s not a show that is produced moment to moment, getting a lot of drama, and then hopefully at the end of it, someone ends up together,” he told Us. “This is from day one, intentional on, ‘How can we help these people find love?’ I think that people will truly love this show as much as I loved making it, as much as I love hosting it.”
The first two episodes of The Vow are streaming now on Fox Nation. New episodes drop every Wednesday.
