Blushing Bachelorette? Tayshia Adams couldn’t help but smile while recording the “Clickbait” podcast with her cohosts Hannah Ann Sluss and Joe Amabile, but the 30-year-old continues to play coy about her role on season 16 of The Bachelorette.
“Did you not see yourself on The Bachelorette, coming out of the pool, looking all hot, looking like Halle Berry?” Hannah Ann, 24, said. “I thought we were friends, you could have given me a forewarning.”
Joe, 34, went on to gush about how beautiful Tayshia looked in the Tuesday, October 27, promo, which featured the phlebotomist coming out of the pool at La Quinta Resort in Palm Springs in an orange bikini.
“We’re friends, we’re coworkers. It’s always good to be respectful, a respectful gentleman, but Tayshia, you did look really good there,” the Dancing With the Stars alum said. “Almost where I’m like, ‘I can’t watch this anymore, she’s my friend, I can’t look at this.’”
Hannah Ann added that she looked “jaw-dropping,” but Tayshia remained cryptic when the Bachelor season 24 winner inquired how many takes it took to get the shot.
“I don’t know what you guys were talking about, all I know is that I love Palm Springs, I love La Quinta, I vacation there,” Tayshia said. “It was summer, it was hot, it was a pool. I was just swimming around.”
Us Weekly confirmed in August that ABC called in Tayshia to replace lead Clare Crawley after the 39-year-old hairstylist found love with one of her suitors within the first two weeks of production. During Tuesday’s episode, fans saw Clare fall harder for Dale Moss while seemingly ignoring all of the other contestants. (Clare has since “liked” tweets blaming editing for her “Dale-obsessed” story line.)
In the promo for the Thursday, November 5, episode of The Bachelorette, Tayshia is seen emerging from the pool after Chris Harrison tells Clare she “blew up” The Bachelorette. ABC executive Robert Mills spoke about the switch-up for the first time after the episode aired, revealing that Clare giving herself a group date rose during Tuesday’s episode was the moment they knew her journey was over.
“I think that Clare was exactly what we thought she’d be, which is Clare — unpredictable,” he said on the “Viall Files” podcast, adding that production was worried it was “just going to be Dale from episode 1 to episode 10.”
He explained, “When she didn’t give out that rose and she just gave it to herself, that was it. That was really it, when we started making the call [to replace her].”
Mills added that Clare and Dale’s relationship will be “chronicled” on the rest of the season, but not featured heavily as Tayshia takes over.
