Megan Parris says Bachelor producers “berate,” “curse at” contestants

Early Bachelor 13 reject Megan Parris has offered strong criticism of the show, and and among her charges are that producers “berate[d]” her during “scripted” confessionals to get her to say certain things, constructed quotes via frankenbiting, and bleeped her even when she wasn’t swearing.

She’s said a version of this before—talking to reporters after her elimination, she said, “I don’t feel like I was portrayed accurately at all … it’s not accurate to who I am but I just hope people realize that the circumstances are not real and it’s not what you see.”—but her recent comments are more specific.

“They chopped up pieces of conversation and did voiceovers. So they’d show a flash of my face and then they’d flash to something else, but I’d still be talking. So they chopped up different parts of conversations to string them along to make them sound like a sentence. But it’s nothing I would ever say,” she told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Of the confessionals, she said, “There’s nothing real about it. It is scripted. They basically will call you names, berate you, curse at you until they get you to say what they want you to say.”

“It’s really hurtful. After I watched the first episode, I literally wanted the earth to swallow me. They made me feel like they were going to make me out to be America’s sweetheart. I went into the experience completely naive and trusting and vulnerable. I let myself get completely manipulated,” she said.

The high school lacrosse coach said that “what [viewers] saw on TV was a character. It wasn’t me. It was not at all indicative of who I am as a person. It was complete misrepresentation of who Megan Parris is.”