Bachelor Castoff Jillian Crowned Bachelorette
ABC/CRAIG SJODIN
Turns out, it's not better to have loved and lost—or rather, been dumped on national television—than to have never been chosen at all.
The Bachelor's third-place finisher, and first-place dignity keeper, Jillian Harris, has been selected to star as the newest Bachelorette when the spinoff of the now controversy-mired reality show kicks off its fifth season this summer.
Bachelor host Chris Harrison announced during last night's season postmortem, "After the Final Rose: Part 2," that the 29-year-old Canadian interior designer would be the latest lady to look for televised love.
"I'm a very lucky person," Harris said, presumably referring to her new gig and not her having been spared humiliation at the hands of flip-flopping Bachelor Jason Mesnick.
"I've been a huge fan of the show since day one, and I've always looked at The Bachelorette as, 'Oh my god, they're so lucky, how did they get there?' And now I'm sitting here—it's very surreal."
Still, give the girl credit for learning from her predecessors' mistakes.
"I guess the only thing I fear is that I hope I make the right choice the first time. The only other fear that I have is that I do not need my dad to see any more hot tub scenes…I have not lived that one [with Jason] down."
She's also realistic but hopeful about her chances for a love that's more Trista and Ryan than, say, Jason and Melissa.
"Although I know there are no guarantees, it is a great, great opportunity for me to meet 25 guys that are a good match for me, and I fell in love once before and know that this is a great venue for me to fall in love again.
"It's one of those things that, you have to be realistic, it's a very unorthodox way to find love. But we are living in a world where people do things differently and there's Internet dating and there's blind dating, but there's something really magical about ABC finding girls like us that were great for Jason and allowing us to get to know each other so quickly."
Harris' Bachelorette will kick off with a two-hour premiere special on May 18 in one of the network's most prime prime-time pieces of real estate: The show airs immediately after the final performance show of Dancing With the Stars.
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