Go inside Joan’s “journey” to find love (again) as ABC’s first-ever senior Bachelorette.
Joan Vassos — willowy, blonde, and 61 years young — is surrounded by 12 senior men who are getting ready to show some skin.
It’s early afternoon on a hot Tuesday in July, and Joan is standing on stage at the Avalon Hollywood nightclub with a group of eligible suitors who hope to win her heart during the inaugural season of The Golden Bachelorette (premiering Sept. 18 on ABC). Right now, though, they’ll have to compete for Joan’s attention with a chiseled Chippendales dancer named RK. The shirtless Adonis, his pecs and abs glistening in the glare of the spotlight, is teaching the group some moves — and if the sounds coming from the stage are any indication, things are getting pretty steamy.
“Ahhhhh…”
“Ohhh, my God…”
“Unghhhhhh…”
Okay, maybe sounds aren’t the best indication. While these gentlemen will be performing a Chippendales-style strip show for Joan later in the day, the current chorus of moans is the result of something not quite as sexy: Stretching exercises. “Ohhh,” groans one man as he rotates his hips in a circle. “Ooof,” another grunts as he attempts to limber up his hamstring. “Oh, man.”
Once the guys are all warmed up, RK begins to demonstrate some signature exotic male dancer moves. There’s the body roll (“Chest, midsection, pelvis, relax!”); “the shampoo” (both hands running through the hair, or in some cases here, the lack of it); and “rub the lotion” (gently caressing each pec as though applying Bengay to a sore muscle). The men watch intently and do their best to follow RK’s instructions. One man in shorts and a golf shirt does a quick pelvic thrust, while another slides his hands sensually over his slightly convex belly.
Joan encourages the men from her spot on the stage, and even attempts a few body rolls herself. The mother of four (and grandma of two) isn’t a habitué of male strip clubs, and she admits to having “mixed feelings” about her dates’ activity. “I would be very uncomfortable going up there and dancing in front of people,” she tells Entertainment Weekly. “And I want this to be a dignified process for people our age.”
Still, Joan is looking forward to the guys’ “Bare It All for Cancer” revue — primarily because it will raise money for Stand Up 2 Cancer, an organization close to her heart. In 2021, she lost her husband of 32 years, John, to the disease. “The fact that it’s for a charity makes it all good for me. My husband died of pancreatic cancer, and many of the guys lost loved ones to cancer,” says Joan. “I hope that they have fun with it because they’re doing something really good, not just kind of salacious.”
Dignity, kindness, and just the right amount of senior sex appeal… that’s what viewers can expect from The Golden Bachelorette. After the runaway success of The Golden Bachelor — which was the highest-rated new reality series of 2023, averaging 9.92 million viewers weekly (across all platforms) — there was no doubt that ABC would follow it up with a female-led season. Alas, Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist’s love story came to a rather abrupt end (more on that later), but fans continued to speculate about who would be the first grandma Bachelorette. Would it be sassy Susan Noles, 67, and her tasty (but toxic) meatballs? Singer-songwriter Faith Martin, 61, who got an “I love you” during hometown dates? Ellen Goltzer, the 72-year-old retired teacher with a dazzling smile? “Sexy Dancer” and heartbroken runner-up Leslie Fhima, 65? Or Joan Vassos, who had a very romantic one-on-one date with Gerry early on, only to decide in episode 3 that her daughter, a new mother struggling with postpartum depression, really, really needed her back at home?
Finally, on May 15, ABC crowned Joan as their first-ever rose queen.
“We talked about a lot of different people,” says Claire Freeland, who serves as executive producer on the Bachelor franchise alongside Bennett Graebner and Jason Erlich. “But Joan’s journey was cut short by something that is very relatable. Joan is a caregiver and that’s why she left her journey last season. She still has a sincere desire to find her next great love. I don’t feel like people got to see enough of her, so I’m thrilled that she’s back.”
Unlike Gerry Turner, who initially turned down the offer to be the inaugural senior Bachelor, Joan had no qualms about raising her hand for Golden Bachelorette. “I did go into Golden Bachelor a little nervous. I didn’t know how they were going to depict us. I didn’t know the producers. Now I know what good hearts they have. They’re trying to help us find love, and they’re not trying to make us look foolish, like, ‘Look at the older people dating.’ So, I was very trusting coming into this, and I really wanted it.”
Still, for some of the 12 men here at the Avalon Hollywood today — all of whom will remain nameless for spoiler reasons — it took a nudge from a loved one to join Joan’s journey. “My oldest daughter thought it would be a great idea. I wasn’t really into it, but she insisted,” says a sophisticated gentleman in his late 60s. “She said, ‘Dad, you have a great personality, you have good energy, you’re a good-looking guy. I think you should do it.'” A sweet, earnest 60-year-old says he “vacillated” on saying yes, but his family’s ties to Bachelor Nation helped convince him. “My late wife and my daughter watched the show religiously,” he says. “So, when my friend nominated me for it, I thought, ‘Okay, maybe.'”
But there’s at least one man who credits fate, not family, for his presence on The Golden Bachelorette. “I was swiping on a dating app, and all of a sudden, I saw someone who looked interesting, so I swiped right,” recalls this tall, dark, and gorgeous sixtysomething from the Midwest. “The next day I found out I got a match — and the first thing she said was, ‘Oh hey, I’m a casting director for The Golden Bachelorette. Would you like to be on it?’ I was completely caught off guard. It took me a couple days to decide to do it. She said it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I weighed it out and said yes.”
To make the final group of 25 men, a suitor had to be “someone you’d be proud to introduce to your 90-year-old mother,” says casting director Jacqui Pitman. “We wanted men who were at a stage where they were sincerely looking for the last love of their life.” And that day at the Avalon, Joan assures us that romance is already happening, even though she’s only part way through filming her season. “I have some strong connections with a few of the guys,” she says. “I am very hopeful.”
But take note: This first-ever season of The Golden Bachelorette is also going to feature a whole lot of bromance. “I had real anxiety going into it,” admits exec producer Graebner. “I was fearful that it might be just a bunch of old guys sitting around a barbecue, and no one wants to watch that. Turns out I was wrong. These men, they’re not afraid to talk about difficult things, both with Joan and with each other. I have never laughed and cried so much in one day on any production as I have here.” Adds Freeland: “It’s been a beautiful surprise. We always refer to the tenets of the show as ‘heart, hope, and humor,’ and we have all of that.”
Initially, Joan shared similar concerns — “I was so worried that they were going to be kind of silent and talking about football and golf and nothing else” — and was thrilled her fears were unfounded. “They share everything with each other. They cry,” she marvels. “They cook dinners together. They have dish duty schedules. They’re so giving. They’re so open and vulnerable, and they love each other.” She lets out a laugh. “I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m over here! Remember me?'”
Let the journey begin (again)
Joan Vassos had been married for more than half her life when John, a businessman and philanthropist, died at the age of 59. For a long time, the idea of dating again seemed impossible. “Everybody said after a year, you should be ready. And that wasn’t even close,” she recalls. “I just kind of floated through that year. I don’t remember a lot of it, honestly. Then year two comes along and in my mind, I think, ‘I should be ready now,’ but my heart wasn’t ready. I wanted to be, because I thought, ‘I’m not getting any younger, I’m not getting any prettier, I’m not getting any more desirable.'” Once she ventured out into the singles scene, she didn’t find a “good match,” but Joan says, “it did show me that I really did want to find somebody.”
Next came The Golden Bachelor, an experience that increased her confidence — and her visibility. After appearing on the show, Joan says she was “inundated” with DMs from men. It wasn’t as much fun as it might sound. “I had a hard time navigating that process. On a dating app, they’re kind of vetted and you can see a profile. [With DMs], they’re just total strangers messaging you,” she recalls. “I didn’t really respond to those much. Or I would have little conversations and say, ‘Thank you, you’re so flattering,’ or whatever. But none of them seemed to be anything that would really work out. And then some of the DMs were weird.”
Uh, weird how?
“I got dick pics,” she reveals. “And I got people with foot fetishes. They wanted me to send them pictures of my feet and would pay me for it. One person offered to buy all the shoes that I wore on Golden Bachelor. It was scary. My kids were like, ‘Give me your phone, mom. We’re blocking all this.'”
At the beginning of this year, producers came to the rescue with news that she was on “the short list” to star on The Golden Bachelorette, but it would be months before Joan learned she had the gig. “They were kind of stringing me along,” she says. “Then these weird reports kept coming in [about] Susan Lucci and Kathy Lee Gifford” as possible Golden Bachelorettes, she adds. “So, I got a little worried.” (Neither Lucci nor Gifford were seriously considered by ABC.)
Eventually — about four months after she started discussions with producers — ABC announced Joan as the star. Though plenty of fans were pleased, the choice also prompted complaints that a woman barely out of her 50s was not, as one article put it, “Golden enough.”
Producers do not agree. “I think once you start getting mail from the AARP — and I get it myself — you’re Golden,” says Graebner. “I would love to see a season with Ellen. I’d also love to see a season with Susan [Noles], with Leslie, with Faith. I can imagine all of those, and they’d all be very different. This was almost an embarrassment of riches.”
And don’t try telling Joan she’s not Golden. Let us take a moment to recall her now-iconic speech as she drove away from the Bachelor mansion on Gerry’s season. “My heart got a little fix from Gerry,” she said through tears. “As you get older, you become more invisible. People don’t see you anymore, like you’re not as significant as when you’re young.” The sentiment earned a collective “Amen!” from viewers, many of whom thanked Joan for speaking that painful truth. “So many people messaged me, and it resonated with so many people. I had no idea,” she says. “It was comforting, and then I felt even lousier about it because I’m like, ‘Oh, this is a common problem. What do we do about it?'”
Putting an “invisible” woman’s love story on national television may help. For Joan, transitioning from contestant to lead has been an adjustment — especially when it comes to her sleep schedule. “The days are long, and they go into nights. You start at 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning and sometimes we don’t get home until 2 a.m.,” she says. As they did with The Golden Bachelor, producers shoot fewer hours per day than on the flagship series, and they try to keep dates and activities localized. Though her IRL bedtime is between 10 and 11 p.m., Joan says she’s currently getting by on about five hours of sleep a night. “As long as I’m up and moving during the day, I do okay,” she says. “But if I sit down for 10 minutes, I’m dead. We had a day off yesterday, and I sat by the pool and slept on and off most of the day. It was really nice.”
Joan’s potential partners, who are all sharing those infamous bunk beds at the Bachelor Mansion, are coping with their own sleeping issues. “The struggle with the snoring is next level,” teases Graebner. “There are all kinds of sleep aids that are being deployed.” One of the senior studs we spoke to at the Avalon says the mansion “is like a frat house. I haven’t slept in a room with other men since college. Guys that snore, guys that do other bodily functions while they sleep.” A six-foot-five senior from the West Coast says he “got lucky” and is sleeping in a twin bed instead of a bunk, but it’s a tight squeeze. “They are so freaking small,” he laments. “My feet are hanging off!”
Yeah, during production, the Bachelor Mansion isn’t the Ritz. It’s barely even a Holiday Inn Express — and a few of the men, notes Freeland, were none too pleased. “There are some people who are used to certain kinds of bedding and linens. I didn’t think we would have men playfully fighting over closet space. ‘Where am I going to fit my Prada?'” Remember the sophisticated gentleman we mentioned earlier? He was so dismayed to discover that he was responsible for doing his own laundry, he started paying another contestant to do it ($100 for a regular load, and $150 for an extra-large pile). “I don’t do laundry, I don’t cook, I don’t clean,” he says with matter-of-fact finality.
When the men aren’t on dates or doing/outsourcing their chores, they find a variety of ways to fill their time at the mansion. Early on, reports Graebner, there were “a lot of guys who wanted to fix things. ‘I want to fix the dishwasher,’ ‘I want to fix the hot tub,’ ‘I want to fix the toilet.’ There were a lot of tools being brought out.” The Golden guys also enjoy working out, tossing a football, playing cornhole, and putting that swimming pool to good use, much like the ladies did on Golden Bachelor. (Grabener and Freeland say viewers may get to see some “synchronized swimming” and “epic cannonballs.”)
It’s not all fun and games, however. The fellas are bonding emotionally, too. “Every day is a therapy session. We’re sitting either one-on-one or in groups, and talking about our feelings, talking about our past loves,” says the earnest 60-year-old. “That is so meaningful. I have friends for life.” Graebner recalls a recent heart-to-heart between the men, one of whom was “harboring an incredible amount of guilt” about his wife’s death. “He had a conversation with another guy in the mansion, who brought him to realize that there was nothing more that he could have done,” Graebner says. “It was a beautiful moment.”
Freeland remembers talking to another contestant off camera after he didn’t get a rose from Joan. “He said, ‘I wasn’t sure before, but now I know I’m special.'” (I’m not crying — you’re crying!)
What happens after ‘happily ever after’
One month before ABC debuted Joan Vassos as the Golden Bachelorette in mid-May, their first pair of senior stars made an announcement of their own. “Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations… and we’ve kind of come to the conclusion mutually that it’s probably time for us to dissolve our marriage,” Gerry Turner told Good Morning America, in a joint interview with Nist. The news, coming just 100 days after Gerry and Theresa’s lavish, live-TV wedding on Jan. 4, had some fans — and plenty of haters — crying fraud. “The mistake was going on national TV to try to feign a relationship and love,” huffed The View co-host Ana Navarro. “I’ve had pimples that lasted longer than this marriage.”
The quickie divorce, which Gerry and Theresa blamed on their inability to agree on a place to live, was not a great look for The Golden Bachelor. That said, it certainly wasn’t the first speed-of-light breakup in Bachelor Nation, and producers say they aren’t concerned that it will tarnish the fledgling senior franchise. “I’m sad whenever any of our couples break up,” says Graebner. “But I spoke to Gerry just a couple of days ago and he has no regrets. If he has no regrets, I don’t either.”
Freeland says that though she was “sad” about Gerry and Theresa’s split, she was pleasantly surprised to learn that their (brief) marriage remains a source of inspiration for singles. “Right now, we’re casting for the upcoming season of The Bachelor, and many, many of the women that we’re meeting are there because of the impact of Golden on them,” she says. “No matter how [Gerry and Theresa’s] love story ended, it doesn’t seem to be making people any less excited about trying to find their own great love.”
Joan, meanwhile, supports her friends in their choice. “I loved that they fell in love on the show. We all saw it happening. I loved that they wanted to dive into it, like, ‘I don’t want to waste any time,'” she says. “Then when they figured out they weren’t good, they didn’t waste any more time with it. I think it was the right thing to do.” While the news didn’t cause her to second-guess her decision to look for love on national TV, she does worry that it might have “shaded or dampened” the show’s message that it’s never too late to find love. “I just want to make sure that I do a good job showing that that’s true,” she explains. “We are all still hopeful, and we have a right to love. It’s possible and it’s worth doing. So, I feel a little more responsible.”
A fast-turnaround wedding — or conflicts over where to buy a house — won’t be an issue for the Bachelorette. Joan has made it clear from the jump that she plans to stay put in Maryland, near her family, no matter what. Relocation is “not happening,” she says. “My family is the most important thing, and I also don’t want a guy who thinks he needs to relocate. If he’s able to uproot his life, he’s probably not my kind of guy.” The ideal solution, says Joan, would be traveling back and forth to each other’s homes, and perhaps “merging someplace in the middle for a few weeks or months.” If she does end the season engaged, saying “I do” will be quite a way off. “I don’t want to rush into anything. I don’t need to! I don’t have a biological clock that I’m worried about anymore,” she says with a laugh. “I have a full life. Figuring out how you merge lives is a longer process. If you have the love, then it’s worth it.”
Joan is not in love yet, but Team Golden Bachelorette is doing its part by sending her on some typically extravagant, over-the-top romantic dates, like a one-on-one at Disneyland Resort, complete with dinner at the exclusive 21 Royal supper club, and what Joan calls an “epic” fireworks display. Another suitor joined Joan on a private jet for a trip to Vegas, where they had dinner under the Eiffel Tower (at the Paris hotel and casino) and enjoyed a serenade from Mr. Las Vegas himself, Wayne Newton. For group dates, we’ll see what Graebner calls “the most spirited game of kickball that network television has ever witnessed,” and some of the Golden singles will also get to relive their high school prom.
Choosing outfits for these occasions has been “one of the most fun parts” about the whole experience, says Joan. “Oh my God, the evening gowns, I can’t even begin to tell you,” she gushes. “There were probably 30 that I was in love with, and I only get to wear eight.” Joan’s Golden Bachelorette wardrobe is so extensive, it has its own hotel room, and Cary Fetman, the Bachelor franchise’s chief stylist, says his star sported some truly daring lewks. “Joan was not nervous about wearing anything,” says Fetman. “Good God, she wore a completely sheer crystal dress one night, and a leather gown another!”
Get it, grandma! Her style may be bold, but when it comes to smooching a bunch of different men on television, Joan is much more bashful. “I’m kind of a private person, so kissing on camera is not comfortable,” she admits. “But you’re always on camera, so if you don’t kiss on camera, you never kiss. You have to do it.” Fortunately, the men have been “complete gentlemen.” Case in point: This story from the earnest 60-year-old. “One time, Joan and I had a conversation, and I asked her, ‘May I kiss you on the cheek?’ She said, ‘Sure.’ I leaned in and I kissed her on the cheek, knowing that my kids are going to see it,'” he says. “But I want to show that I have” — here he pauses and makes air quotes — “game. Back when I was younger, felt like I had game. But now, I’m 60 years old, what kind of game do I have? It’s not easy.”
Well, he’ll have plenty of opportunity to prove he’s still got game when he takes the stage at the Avalon Hollywood. It’s late afternoon now, and the audience of about 120 eager Bachelor fans have been ushered into the theater and placed on either side of the runway. After choosing from a rack of costumes with names like “Dr. Hunk,” “Priority Male,” and “Howdy Pardner,” the 12 men — nervous, excited, and AARP-eligible — wait for their cue. Former Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe, serving as emcee, greets the crowd and assures them that the men “have been working hard to create an amazing performance for Joan.”
With that, the stage goes dark, and Lady Gaga’s “LoveGame” starts pounding through the speakers. The first Golden bachelor — dressed as “Sargent Sexy” in camo pants and a fitted tank top — strides down the runway to where Joan and Kaitlyn are seated, fueled by Gaga’s hypnotic mantra: “Let’s have some fun/This beat is sick/I wanna take a ride/On your disco stick.”
We won’t spoil what happens next, other than to say it elicits a tsunami of shrieks and giddy gasps from the crowd. One by one, the rest of the Golden bachelors make their way down the runway, showboating for Joan and the audience. Kisses are blown, bottoms are waggled, at least one man executes a perfect “rub the lotion” on his broad (and bare) chest. The men are performing for the Golden Bachelorette, but they’re also cheering their fellow contestants on with gusto, slapping each other on the back and sharing high fives. When the show is over, all 12 of them embrace in a fervent group hug. “Woo! Woo! Woo!” they chant, jumping up and down with delight.
Once the audience has cleared out, Joan, who’s changed into a shimmery cocktail dress for the group date afterparty, sits down for a minute to rave to us about her sexy suitors. “I’m so grateful that they embraced it so much. Every single one that came up and bared it all, literally and figuratively, I was surprised,” she says. “They just did it with all their heart. As uncomfortable as that had to have been, they put that aside and they did it.” Her only reservation about the whole thing is how her adult children — Nicholas, Erica, Allison, and Luke — are going to react. “They said to me, ‘Oh please don’t kiss anyone on TV,’ so this is going to be a hard one for them, isn’t it?” says the Golden Bachelorette with a laugh. “I might tell them not to watch this episode.”
Awww, don’t worry, Joan. Just remind your kids about the Bachelor franchise motto: Heart, humor, hope — and hip-thrusts.
