So we now know that ABC is not editing out Salt Lake City contestant Eric Hill’s time on The Bachelorette and Chris Harrison is weighing in on why.
Monday night a handsome and smiling Eric emerged from the limo with dolls in hand to give to Bachelorette Andi Dorfman.
He even spent some quality 1 on 1 time with her explaining his Global Odyssey job and how he “purposefully kept it open to have that option” (the option to go on another sort of adventure–aka The Bachelorette).
Of course, we all know about his tragic death so seeing Eric was sort of bitter sweet.
ABC addressed Eric Hill’s death with a brief tribute video dedicating the season to him.
Host Chris Harrison weighed in to Entertainment Weekly on the unprecedented situation:
“This was a very rare instance and a horrible tragic instance where it affected us, the crew, and the producers of this show just as much as it did the cast. We know Eric, we’ve been working with him, our producers have been in his hometown with his family, so when this happened, we learned of it, and we were mourning, and we were upset just as much as we knew the cast would be, Andi and the guys, as soon as we told them. It’s very rare that we’ll have something like that. In fact, it’s the first time in the 12 years we’ve been doing the show where we’ve had this sort of situation.”
“So it was wise and important for us to slow down and stop and realize that we were upset about this as well and needed to take it all in and mourn and deal with it emotionally and personally, and then try to figure out how professionally we would deal with it” …..
“And our first step was to obviously honor him at the top of the show because we had made the decision, I think wisely, to leave him in and not take him out of the show.”
The 32-year-old contestant died in a paragliding accident in Utah on April 24th of 2014, after he left the show. We know that Eric gets the first 1 on 1 tomorrow night so we will get to know him better then.
The previews make it look like they will air some of the drama around Eric, so we shall see….
Photo: (Rick Rowell/ABC)
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