It's no secret that Nick Viall has been unlucky in love during his tenure in the Bachelor franchise. The poor guy has been runner-up in not one, but two consecutive seasons of The Bachelorette and, considering his new gig as The Bachelor, all signs point to another letdown for Nick once all is said and done on this season of Bachelor in Paradise. But the powers that be at ABC feel certain that the fourth time is the charm—and that The Bachelor is where he was always meant to be.
"I think part of his charm that's really come out on Bachelor in Paradise is he's so great with the girls, and not as a romantic interest to all of them, but almost as a big brother or good male friend," ABC exec Robert Mills admitted in an interview on SirusXM's LA Daily. "And you see he's not really cut out for Bachelorette, where sometimes it's like if you're not a bro, you're not necessarily gonna fit in."
Robert also offered some insight into the somewhat unorthodox decision made by the network to break tradition and cast Nick rather than one of the fellas from the most recent season of The Bachelorette. In the end, ABC just felt that JoJo Fletcher rejects Luke Pell and Chase McNary were too similar to last season's Bachelor, Ben Higgins.
"Ben was absolutely fantastic. He had a great season, and sometimes when you follow the same with the same, you end up with something lesser," Robert said. "You can say what you want, but certainly from a ratings perspective, when we followed Sean [Lowe] with Juan Pablo [Galavis,] which was sort of a left-turn, it worked out really well for us. A lot of people watched. I remember when we announced Juan Pablo, it was like being at a rock concert."
Of course, without Nick's redemptive arc on Bachelor in Paradise, none of this would've happened at all. "We started seeing people say, 'I can't believe this, God help me, I like Nick,' when Bachelor in Paradise started airing," Robert explained. "Certainly someone who had gone on Bachelorette twice, was the runner-up and then had gone on Bachelor in Paradise, that just didn't seem like something that was even in the realm of comprehension. But there was a lot of, 'I really like him, and I can't believe I'm saying this.'"
Here's hoping that the Twitter love leads to true love because, if there's one thing Nick isn't the the market for, it's more heartbreak. "Is he afraid of anything? I think it's obvious," his friend of 32 years Marcos Hernandez told E! News, "he doesn't want to have his heart broken again."
Do you think the fourth time will be the charm for Nick? Let us know in the comments below.