TV & Movies
Golden Bachelorette Joan Vassos Lied To Her Family Before Filming
“We all knew that was a lie.”
Before arriving at Bachelor Mansion to find love, The Golden Bachelorette star Joan Vassos told a little white lie to her family about her plans for the show.
As longtime fans know, things can get very intimate between the show’s contestants while filming, especially during fantasy suite dates. Before cameras went up, Vassos promised her family that she “wouldn’t kiss anybody.” However, she recently revealed to Fox News Digital that she was fibbing.
“They were very adamant about me [not] kissing men on TV and about fantasy suites. So that was like super embarrassing for them,” Vassos said. “We all knew that was a lie. So, oh well!”
The Golden Bachelorette later confessed to her family that she was open to PDA on the show. “I’m going to probably kiss a fair amount of guys on camera; I’m sorry guys,” she admitted to her children, grandkids, mother, and mother-in-law, in a promo clip, adding, “You don’t want to be with somebody that you don’t want to kiss, so you have to try it out.”
Vassos’ family went into her Golden Bachelorette journey having already seen her date on TV. She joined Bachelor Nation in 2023 as a contestant on Gerry Turner’s season of The Golden Bachelor before she self-eliminated to help her newly postpartum daughter.
“My journey to find love took a detour this week as I traded the mansion for motherhood and headed home to be with my family,” she wrote, in part, on Instagram after the episode aired. “Family comes first, period. Once a mother, always a mother, I’ll always choose my kids first.”
Many fans applauded Vassos’ decision and called for her to lead the first-ever season of The Golden Bachelorette. ABC got on board and officially announced her role in May 2024.
“The secret is out!” Vassos wrote in her Instagram stories at the time, adding that she was “honored” to have been chosen to front the show.
Family First
While she makes no apologies for her quest to find love on the hit reality show, the Golden Bachelorette reiterated her commitment to her family in a CNN interview in May, saying she would “never leave [her] family” for a man.
“They are the most important people in the world to me obviously, and I would expect that to be the same for the person that I end up with,” she said. “Family is so important to me, that would have to be a key part of their personality.”
In the aforementioned promo clip, Vassos also reassured her children that she has no intentions “to replace dad,” referencing her first husband, John Vassos, who died in 2021. The couple were married for 32 years before his passing, and they welcomed four children together: Nicholas, Erica, Allison, and Luke.
