The Bachelor Franchise Finally Has Their First Black Male Lead: Matt James

Source: Paul Bruinooge / Getty

The Bachelor isn’t exactly known for their diversity, only having one Black lead in the entire franchise history up until this point. That lead, Rachel Lindsay, along with hoards of other fans have been pressuring the franchise more than ever lately to name their first Black male lead for the upcoming season, and on Friday, they did just that.

For season 25, our new Bachelor is Matt James! The announcement came as a total surprise on June 12, with the official Bachelorette Twitter page revealing the news.

To superfans of the show, this announcement isn’t super shocking, but for those who don’t pay attention to social media outside of the program, this pick may be pretty unusual.

Matt James grew his own following after being seen with his best friend, Tyler Cameron, the runner-up on Hannah Brown’s season of The Bachelorette. He was cast to be on the upcoming season of the series, fighting for a chance at love with Bachelorette Clare Crawley, though many online suspected his role as a contestant competing for love was all a ploy to get him as the lead in the following season. Whether or not that was actually the producers’ plan we’ll never know, but in the end, the theory became true.

While this choice doesn’t come close to the white leads the show has been boasting for nearly 2 decades, it’s amazing to see how far holding companies accountable can take us.