'This is gonna be a successful season.'
Love is in the air in paradise!
ET's Lauren Zima caught up with Bachelor franchise host Chris Harrison on Monday, and he teased that more successful relationships will begin forming when Bachelor in Paradise's sixth season premieres on Monday.
Fans eagerly await the series each summer to see future Bachelor Nation favorite couples in their early stages, with such beloved pairs as Jade Roper and Tanner Tolbert, Carly Waddell and Evan Bass, and Raven Gates and Adam Gottschalk coming out of the show. This season, Harrison promised, will be no different.
"It's been massively successful. But again, people say, 'Why?' Well the percentages are greater [because] there are 20-something people running around on that beach, so the chance of people coupling up is much higher," Harrison explained to ET. "This is gonna be a successful season. There will be love. I won't tell you how much, or how far it goes, but there will be love."
"We had to dust Neil Lane off," Harrison added with a laugh of the Bachelor franchise jeweler.
Though Harrison wouldn't get into too many details about who pairs up with whom, he said that while Hannah Godwin may be the most pursued lady when Paradise kicks off, there's no shortage of potential couples throughout the season.
"There's love squares and octagons that you're going to have to pay attention to," he said. "Your chalkboard's gonna be busy this year."
Another person sure to capture hearts this summer is Demi Burnett, who came out as queer after the BiP trailer showed her declaring her feelings for a woman. Harrison said that the way the show handled that storyline -- which was the first of its kind in the franchise -- is something that makes him "really proud."
"It's a sensitive subject. It shouldn't be, and we're trying to kind of rip that Band-Aid off, but it is. It's going to be taboo, and I'm not so naive as to think it's going to be all positive... I'm proud of Demi. I'm proud of our producers. I'm proud of the way we handled it. I think it's great and it's time. It's more than time, but I'm glad that we've done it in the right way, very organically allowing it to happen naturally."
Despite Harrison's pride in both Burnett and his show, he knew ahead of time that people would have strong feelings about an LGBTQ love story appearing on the series. That, Harrison said, is something that Burnett, whom he dubbed "the queen of Paradise," has already been experiencing the negative ramifications of on social media.
"I talked to her after all this was over and she was crying, we were all crying, we're hugging," he recalled. "... Everybody was very celebratory and very happy and I said, 'Just know that there's going to be negative that comes with this, from within that community and without.'... I'm prepared for that. That's just the world we live in with social media and everything else."
"... What you see with Demi is not what you get. She's not bulletproof. She's not a tank. Usually, it's those that speak the loudest and have the best self-deprecating sense of humor [[that] are the most sensitive, and she is sensitive," he continued. "And so I'm worried about her in that she looks like she's strong and bring it on and she has that queen mentality, but she's vulnerable and she has feelings too. I told her, 'I'm there for you 24/7 if you need anything.' Because I think it's going to be hard for her."
While love is certainly one outcome of Paradise, a whole lot of drama and sex typically precede any happily ever after. For the drama this season, Harrison teased that Blake Horstmann comes for Dean Unglert's f**kboy title by hooking up with multiple women prior to and during filming.
"When Dean looks at you and says, 'Wow, you've really gone a little overboard in that department,' that's saying a lot," Harrison said, referencing Unglert's tumultuous time on the last season of Paradise. "Dean is the gold standard, but when Dean and his mustache both judge you, you know you've done wrong."
"... Maybe he was believing the hype, drinking his own Kool-Aid, thinking that all the people that tell him out in public that he's the greatest guy ever, maybe he thought he was the greatest guy ever," Harrison added of Horstmann's state of mind on the show. "Maybe this is exactly what he needed, was a swift kick in the a**."
Between Horstmann and the other contestants' Paradise hookups, Harrison quipped that his "abacus got lost" before he could determine if it was the most sex the show had ever seen, but confirmed that sex would be a big conversation point this season.
"This is a show evolving and this is Paradise evolving, and the fact that all of these people... hook up and they all mingle and they all talk, and they are all constantly maneuvering and manipulating, and that was happening heading into Paradise," Harrison teased. "... The show has always been a microcosm of what is happening in the real world, and I think there is more conversation about sexuality, sex, race, religion, all this stuff... I think it is just bleeding over. That's always been the case for the show: We evolve with what is going on in the world."
As for this season of Paradise as a whole, Harrison said that the fights, cast, love stories and more come together to make it the "best season... we've ever had."
Bachelor in Paradise's sixth season premieres Monday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC, and will air Mondays and Tuesdays on the network.
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