It’s almost time to get golden (again), Bachelor Nation. ABC shared the official key art and tagline for the first season of The Golden Bachelorette, starring Joan Vassos, exclusively with Us Weekly.
Joan, 61, looks striking in the image, decked out in a gold ensemble, which is complete with a gold rose. The poster reads, “Love never ages.”
Fans met Joan when she appeared on the inaugural season of The Golden Bachelor, which starred Gerry Turner and aired in fall 2023. While she had a quick connection with Gerry, 72, Joan self-eliminated to be with her daughter who had just given birth. ABC named her the next lead in May.
“I so thought that I was gonna be that girl who left that nobody remembers. I truly believed that was gonna be the outcome,” Joan told Entertainment Tonight in June before she left to start filming the show. “I really was sad about that, honestly, because I loved being here. I think the process worked. I was sad when I had to leave, so having the opportunity to come back and [having] people actually remember me a little bit [is amazing].”
And while things didn’t work out with Gerry — he married final rose winner Theresa Nist in January, but the twosome split three months later — Joan got advice from the first-ever senior lead of the franchise.
“We text all the time. He’s a very, very good friend. He did this so well. He kind of created the road map that we have now. There’s no rulebook, and he kind of wrote it a little bit,” Joan said. “He exemplified somebody who is very open and vulnerable. He said that’s what you need to be from day one, because you don’t have a lot of time.”
She continued, “This is a quick journey. You can’t leave anything on the table. I feel like day one, starting conversation one, everything you do here is important.”
Like many of Gerry’s contestants (and Gerry himself), Joan has been candid about the death of her spouse. Joan’s husband of 32 years, John Vassos, died in 2021 at age 59 after battling pancreatic cancer.
“I did not want to spend my life alone, so I knew that I had to take action, but my heart wasn’t there at all,” she told CNN earlier this year. “I was saying to my friend, ‘How in the world do you date now? Look around this restaurant. Everybody here is a couple. Everybody my age is married. All my friends are married.’”
During her aforementioned interview with ET, Joan declared that John would be proud of her. “He loved reality TV. He was a dive in with both feet to anything you do [kind of person]. I think he’s up there going, ‘Look, that’s my wife down there. She’s doing this,’” she said.
The Golden Bachelorette was ordered by the network after the major ratings success for The Golden Bachelor. ABC revealed in May that the show has reached 43.5 million viewers.
“I think back to Trista, the first-ever Bachelorette, and she’s an icon. She’s the OG. I don’t know if I’m ever gonna be revered like her. Her love story was perfect,” Joan, who shared four kids with John, told ET of Trista and Ryan Sutter. “She has a lovely family, she has a beautiful husband, she has adorable kids. She had the perfect end to this journey, so I hope I have an epic end like she did. It’s a lot of pressure.”
