Chris Harrison Jokes the Biggest Bachelor Production Expenses Are Condoms and STD Testing
Bachelorette star Hannah Brown may have discovered a condom in contestant Peter Weber’s car during hometown dates, but he likely didn’t need to supply his own when it came to their night together in the windmill.
Bachelor host Chris Harrison stopped by Lights Out with David Spade, and joked that the reality show’s biggest costs were providing contestants with protection and preliminary sexually transmitted disease testing.
“[Condoms] and the STD test – easily the biggest expense,” said Harrison, 48. “Easily the biggest expense.”
The revelation came in response to The Big Bang Theory actress and fellow guest Kaley Cuoco, who asked the host about the show’s condom budget.
Of course, Brown sent Weber and Tyler Cameron packing, accepting a proposal from winner Jed Wyatt, who she soon dumped for having a girlfriend when he went on the reality show.
The distribution of condoms in the fantasy suites has long been a topic of discussion, especially since Courtney Robertson, who got engaged to Ben Flajnik on The Bachelor in 2012, claimed production did not give her and Flajnik any during their night together.
“Producers had left a cell phone for us in case of emergency, but they did not leave us any condoms,” she wrote in her 2014 book I Didn’t Come Here to Make Friends.
RELATED: Bachelorette Hannah Brown: People Questioned My Faith After I Revealed I Had Sex on the Show
Other contestants have disagreed, with former Bachelorette Ali Fedotowsky saying she believed the male contestants got them.
“I don’t know because I don’t think I remember, honestly,” she told Entertainment Tonight in 2017. “I think that maybe they give them to the guys or something, which is crazy, they should give to the girls, too. But I think they just [give them to the guys] to make it not awkward.”
RELATED VIDEO: Hannah Brown Reveals Her Pick for the Next Bachelor: ‘I Want Them to Have Happiness’
The 2018 book Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure, written by Amy Kaufman, also addressed the issue, though Kaufman wrote that producers left contestants rose petals, a handheld camera and “bowls of condoms everywhere.”
“It was like, ‘Oh, OK, so we can be safe if we want to be,” said Jen Schefft, who was the Bachelorette in 2005. “But honestly? We don’t need a bowlful.”
RELATED: The Bachelorette’s Hannah Brown Says She’d Consider Doing the Show Again: ‘Never Say Never!’
Bachelor Nation also claimed that applicants who test positive for an STD are immediately taken out of the running. The book alleged that failed STD tests are the most common reason potential contestants get the boot.
“As soon as the medical tests came back, you’d see that herpes was the biggest thing,” said Ben Hatta, [creator and executive producer] Mike Fleiss’s old assistant. “And sometimes you’d be the first person to tell a contestant that they had herpes. You’d be like, ‘Uh, you should call your doctor.’ Why? ‘We’re not going to be able to have you on our show, but you should call your doctor.’ Then they’d realize they’d been denied from ‘The Bachelor’ and now a bunch of people knew they had herpes.”
Sex on the show became a hot topic on Brown’s season,after she admitted to having sex in a windmill four times with Weber during their fantasy suite date.
The decision later eventually led Brown to eliminate the season’s “villain,” Luke Parker, after he said he wouldn’t want to continue their relationship if she had sex with any of the other remaining contestants.
“The conversation about sex can be hard for people to talk about and can make women and men feel a sense of shame,” Brown recently told PEOPLE. “But I can be a woman of faith and also be sex-positive. And I am not going to stop talking about the things that I believe in.”
