Season 17 of The Bachelorette kicks off on Monday, June 7, and Suzana, who runs @BachelorData on Instagram, broke down Katie Thurston’s journey by the numbers on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast.
After crunching the numbers, Suzana, who works as an “educator and technology director” during the day when she’s not running the popular Instagram account, revealed Katie is the fourth oldest Bachelorette at 30 years old. (Clare Crawley was named the oldest lead at 40 years old in 2020.)
“Bachelorette casting tends to be older. Whereas Bachelor casting, so casting a ton of women, seems to be younger,” she explained on the podcast. “Now for Katie’s season, she’s the fourth oldest Bachelorette at the age of 30, but her cast is the fourth youngest of all the men that we’ve ever seen for The Bachelorette.”
Overall, the average age of Katie’s 30 contestants is 28 — two years younger than the former banking manager. When it comes to their hometowns, over half of the season 17 cast hail from California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and Texas. According to @BachelorData, there’s never been a Bachelorette contestant from five states: Arkansas, Delaware, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Wyoming.
“The other thing that I found interesting is if you look at contestants that their hometown is the capital of a state, it’s, like, none of the contestants. On The Bachelorette — ever since Trista [Sutter’s] season — only 8 percent of contestants have been from a state capitol,” she noted.
When it comes to their Instagram followings, which are likely to skyrocket after Monday’s premiere, Karl Smith, who was previously cast for Clare’s season but ultimately didn’t compete on the show in 2020, and Cody Menk have the most followers going into the season. Greg Grippo, meanwhile, has had the biggest growth since the cast was announced, per Suzana.
While Katie is the 18th woman to hand out roses (Tayshia Adams took over for Clare after the hairstylist left with Dale Moss within the first two weeks of production), she is the first to wear red on night one.
“Every single lead has worn either silver or gray, black or a brown-gold kind of combination or white. So, out of all those colors, the one that comes in first is a silver/ gray dress color. And that’s been most popular since season 7 through Clare,” Suzana revealed. “Five Bachelorettes have actually worn silver [or] gray, which is a third of them.”
For more from @BachelorData, including whose following has gone up and down the most in Bachelor Nation, listen to Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast.