Lauren Bushnell Lane and Shawn Booth bonded over their similar — and slightly alarming — experiences with their mutual Bachelor Nation producer.
Lauren, who was engaged to season 20 Bachelor Ben Higgins from 2016 to 2017, claimed the producer fake cried in an effort to make Lauren upset about the possibility of Ben giving JoJo Fletcher his final rose.
“I’m calling Todd out right now,” Lauren told Shawn, 37, on his “In The Booth” podcast on Monday, July 31, noting that she has “zero hard feelings” toward the producer. “I think he’s a great guy, [but] I literally remember sitting there at the end — I think it was myself and JoJo. It was, like, the final two. … He’s like, ‘What if he doesn’t pick you?’ Or whatever. And I think he could tell that I was just kind of like, shutting off to protect myself, which I’ve realized is something that I do. So I wasn’t really showing any emotion. And I think he wanted to draw out emotion in me. So, like, he started to cry. Did he ever do that to you?”
Shawn confirmed he had a similar experience. (While the former contestants didn’t use Todd’s name, they are seemingly referring to Todd Snyder, who worked on both of their seasons.)
“Yes! They’ll start playing music on their phone, like, really sad songs and you haven’t heard a song in, like, eight weeks, you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, that feels so good,’” Shawn recalled.
While Lauren clarified that she “didn’t hear a song,” she shared more insight into her interaction with the producer on the 2016 season of the ABC show.
“He just started showing emotion and, like, started crying,” she said, claiming that she realized in the moment that they were fake tears. “He wasn’t really crying. It put me in this weird place where I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, like, where am I? What am I doing?’ I had this weird realization of, ‘They have an agenda.’ And it’s not bad — his agenda in itself is not bad. He just wants me to open up and show emotion. … He’s trying to, like, bring that out of me.”
Lauren reiterated that she didn’t question Todd’s intentions. “I’m on a TV show. … And they want me to be in a role right now and to just be real and raw, which again, is why people love that show,” she said. “But I think if anything, it made me, like, shut off [even more].”
Shawn, who was engaged to season 11 Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe from 2015 to 2018, wasn’t so sure about Todd, telling Lauren that he put “too much trust” into his producer.
“He was the only producer that I had talked to for 12 weeks — I was putting my trust in him. And he knew kind of what could trigger me,” he said, denying that he still feels “burned” by Todd. “Because now that I look back at it, I understand that the Bachelor and Bachelorette is a business, like, hundreds of millions of dollars. And Todd’s doing his job — that’s why he’s one of the best. They’re there to make a show. I don’t wish I went in there knowing that because then I wouldn’t have opened up, but there are definitely things that [aired] and I was like, ‘Oh, OK, that’s not exactly what happened.’ … I used to be very bitter about it.”
While Lauren went on to marry Chris Lane, with whom she shares two sons, Shawn announced earlier this month that he’s going to be a dad in December when his “baby mama” Audrey “Dre” Joseph gives birth.
