Gigi Hadid—a supermodel with a reported $19 million net worth—was recently spotted on a date with a Bachelorette contestant who works as a general contractor in Jupiter, Florida.
Last week, tabloids lit up when Hadid and Bachelorette contestant Tyler Cameron were spotted at New York’s Soho House. More surprising than the unlikely pair was the timing. Cameron had just been photographed at Bachelorette Hannah Brown’s apartment after the two reportedly got drinks (something Brown asked him to do on national TV after she dumped him for a short-lived engagement to Jed Wyatt). Cameron then quickly flew across the country to score a date with Hadid and just four days after he was seen leaving Brown’s L.A. apartment, he was seen leaving Hadid’s NYC apartment. Congrats to him!
Fans who keep up with the show’s franchise and all of the gossip that takes place after cameras shut off probably aren’t surprised by this. Mainstream celebrities have been dating below their star level and swimming in the Bachelor pool for years now. Modern Family star Sarah Hyland and Bachelorette contestant Wells Adams are probably the most successful story of B-lister meets D-lister. Back in 2017, Hyland flirted with Adams over Twitter and now the two are engaged.
Yes, for as long as celebrities have been on Twitter, they have been trying to get with Bachelor contestants. In 2011, after Ben Flajnik poured out his heart to Ashley Hebert and nearly proposed to the Bachelorette lead, actress Jennifer Love Hewitt expressed her admiration for Flajnik through tweets.
“‘Omg! Ben f except my final rose !!!” Hewitt tweeted in 2011. “Gotta book a flight to Sonoma !!!:):)” Hewitt did end up visiting Flajnik in Sonoma where he has a winery. Flajnik has said the two went on a few dates, but ultimately, he ended up not dating Hewitt and instead opted to be season 16’s Bachelor.
“It’s an amazing story when you think about it,” Flajnik said on the Reality Steve Podcast about dating Hewitt. “I grew up in the Can’t Hardly Wait era in high school watching whatever her character‘s name was walk through the high school doors, going, ‘Oh, man.’ And then a few years later, you’re having dinner with her. It’s pretty nuts.”
This season, Demi Lovato gushed over Bachelorette contestant Mike Johnson on Instagram. She filmed herself watching Johnson during the season and even commented on one of his tweets, saying, “I’M RIGHT HERE MIKE I’M RIGHT HERE BOO MY MOM ALREADY LOVES YOU TOO.” Taking it one step further, Lovato went to the live taping of The Bachelorette finale, but Johnson wasn’t there.
On Kaitlyn Bristowe’s season of The Bachelorette, comedian Amy Schumer stopped by for a group date where she helped the men write jokes to perform.
“I love this show,” Schumer told the camera. “I’m a fan of this show and Kaitlyn is my favorite person that’s ever been on it and I really am pulling for her and I hope she finds love.”
When Schumer was on Good Morning America a few years later to promote her Netflix special, GMA surprised her with a special video message from Bachelor Nick Viall.
Celebrities—just like most of Bachelor fandom—seem to love to hate Viall.
On an episode of The Late Late Show with James Corden, actress January Jones admitted she was a fan of the franchise and when Bachelorette Bristowe sent Ben Higgins home, Jones wanted to shoot her shot. Higgins seemed to have never called Jones, but Bristowe’s runner-up, Viall, did. The two eventually became friends and were rumored to have dated.
Viall didn’t stop there. On another episode of The Late Late Show, actress Emmy Rossum told the host and Jones that she once spotted Viall drinking coffee at The Grove in L.A.
“I did that thing that I’m sure people have done to you where you kind of covertly try to take a picture of the famous person without—kind of like making pretend you’re reading or texting somebody,” Rossum told the host, “but I really have to get in zooming and…then I texted it to everyone I know. And I hate when people do that to me.”
Maybe Bachelor contestants are famous people’s famous people.
Kendall Long, a contestant of Bachelor in Paradise and Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s season of The Bachelor, says anytime she’s at an event with mainstream celebrities, they usually approach her because they’re fans of the show. Last week, she says baseball players confessed to watching the show and knowing who she was.
As far as celebrities reaching out to Bachelor contestants, she says she believes it’s because of the nature of the show.
“I think it maybe has to do with, they see these people in a romantic setting and they see them dating and they maybe get an idea of how they would be in a relationship,” Long tells The Daily Beast, “and after that, maybe they romanticize them being with that person and they probably just make a move. Hey, why not?”
Elizabeth Scrivner, therapist and CEO of Park Cities Counseling in Dallas, says considering Cameron is a rising model, maybe him and Hadid have more in common than we think.
“You can look at it a few ways,” Scrivner says. “I look at it as you are attracted to who you are attracted to and some celebrities do not care about their partner being famous and prefer it. Another way to see it is, they have enough in common and there is an attraction. Some celebrities want to have a level of normalcy in their home life. This can come in the form of being with a non-celebrity. In this case, Tyler seems to be rising to new modeling heights.”
