While Bachelor Nation leads and contestants aren’t typically able to communicate with their loved ones while filming the show, Michelle Young secretly hacked the system.
Michelle, 30, posted a pic of her Netflix screen via her Instagram Story on Wednesday, February 28, with a message that read, “Love you too. Wishing you the best – xoxo the Fam.”
“How I spoke to my family back when I was filming The Bachelorette … Oops,” Michelle wrote.
Bachelor Nation met Michelle when she vied for the affections of Matt James during season 25 of The Bachelor. After ending the show as his runner-up, Michelle was named the lead of The Bachelorette season 18 in March 2021. While she accepted a proposal from Nayte Olukoya during the December 2021 finale, the pair confirmed their split in June 2022.
Michelle isn’t the only Bachelor Nation member who’s attempted to communicate with loved ones outside the filming bubble. Ahead of Matt’s season, pal Tyler Cameron shared the duo developed a plan in case he needed some help on his journey to find love.
“So me and Matt have created this SOS signal through our Peloton bikes,” Tyler, 31, told Access Hollywood in October 2020. “He’s going to send me a certain signal through Peloton bike … and that means I need to come rescue him.”
Tyler admitted he planned to ride his bike everyday in case Matt, 32, did message him.
“I will be crawling through the woods and forest in camouflage … I will do everything to find his room and I will throw him over my shoulder and I will hop over a fence and take him home,” he said.
Tyler seemingly didn’t need to use the SOS signal to reach Matt, as the season 25 lead ended the show with girlfriend Rachael Kirkconnell. (The pair called it quits when Rachael’s past racially insensitive actions made headlines but got back together in April 2021.)
Michelle, for her part, has since moved on with boyfriend Jack Leius, who she was introduced to by a mutual friend.
“We were going through devastating breakups [and] we were in the same stage of our breakups as we were going through ‘not ready met someone’ [to] ‘ready to meet somebody’ and then those few steps back,” Young recalled of Leius in January on the “Almost Famous” podcast. “We go to all the same bars … the lake he grew up on, my family fishes [there] 24/7.”
