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Chris Harrison Admits He Was ‘Skeptical’ of ‘Listen to Your Heart,’ Reveals He’s Turned Down ‘Bachelor’ Spinoffs in the Past


Not all Bachelor spinoffs are created equally — and Chris Harrison joined Us Weekly’s Bachelor podcast, “Here for the Right Reasons,” to break down all of the installments of the franchise.

Related: ‘Listen to Your Heart’: Everything to Know About ‘The Bachelor’ Spinoff

“I won’t say which one — one [spinoff] has already come and gone that I did not want to be a part of — and I wasn’t,” the 48-year-old host told Us on the Tuesday, April 14, episode of the podcast. “And you know, there are dozens and dozens of ideas that we throw out, I throw out, [creator] Mike Fleiss [throws out], everybody. And some of them come to fruition and some of them are great ideas and they just don’t happen.”

Chris Harrison Reveals Hes Turned Down Bachelor Spinoffs Past
ABC/John Fleenor

The Bachelor premiered on ABC in March 2002. Less than one year later, ABC debuted The Bachelorette in January 2003. Bachelor Pad, The Bachelor Canada, Bachelor in Paradise and The Bachelor Winter Games followed. The only spinoff that wasn’t hosted by Harrison was The Bachelor Canada, which last aired in 2017. (Fleiss also enlisted former Bachelor Jesse Palmer to host the short-lived show The Proposal in 2018.) While the longtime host is front and center on the most latest spinoff, Listen to Your Heart, he wasn’t initially sold on the idea.

Related: Former ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Bachelorette’ Winners: Where Are They Now?

“We always throw stuff against the wall and try to be creative. When I heard this idea, at first, I was a little skeptical,” he told Us. “I’m like, A Star Is Born meets The Bachelor? I need to know what this looks like.’ And we all have to kind of put our creative hats on and figure this out, which was kind of fun.”

Listen to Your Heart, which follows 23 single men and women looking for love through music, began its six-episode run on ABC Monday, April 13. Harrison assured Us that the new series “feels right” for Bachelor Nation.

Chris Harrison Reveals Hes Turned Down Bachelor Spinoffs Past
ABC/John Fleenor

“Just know that if you’re a Bachelor fan, it’s going to have that awesome familiarity,” he teased. “But then there’s going to be this weird, eccentric twist to it that you’re not quite sure where it’s going. That’s why it’s so good and so new and so fresh. I think Bachelor Nation will absolutely just gobble this thing up.”

Related: ‘The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart’ Cast

While production on season 16 of The Bachelorette and season 7 of Bachelor in Paradise remain on hold amid the coronavirus pandemic, Harrison told Us that the Bachelor seniors spinoff may no longer be moving forward. ABC put out a casting call for singles over 65 in February.

“We were just talking about doing a, you know, an older version of the Bachelor for seniors,” he said. “I don’t know where that stands now, that idea. The idea of Summer and Winter Games was genius and that actually worked. And so, yeah, there’s been a ton of ideas, some come to fruition, some don’t.” (The Bachelor: Summer Games was postponed shortly after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were moved to 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.)

For more from Harrison, including his thoughts on Peter Weber and Kelley Flanagan, listen to Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast, which releases new episodes every Tuesday.

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