Will Matt James still be accepting Clare Crawley's rose?
When the 32 contestants for The Bachelorette's upcoming 16th season were revealed in March, there was one familiar face that had Bachelor Nation very excited: Matt James.
While the ABC Food Tours founder hasn't had any reality TV experience, he is best friends with Tyler Cameron, the fan-favorite Bachelorette runner-up from Hannah Brown's season. (We'll get to those two in a moment...)
Given his closer friendship with Tyler, fun social media presence, and you know, that face, some fans were already calling for Matt, 28, to be the next Bachelor.
But just a few days later, ABC had to postpone filming on Clare's season due to the coronavirus outbreak, with it later being revealed that the 39-year-old hairdresser would likely have new men cast as her suitors.
While many fans are happy over the recasting news given some of the men's ages, we couldn't help but wonder whether or not Matt would still be one of the contestants heading to the mansion when The Bachelorette resumes production.
So when E! News spoke to Matt ahead of NEOU Fit-A-Thon, a 12-hour fitness event on Instagram Live to raise money for healthcare workers on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to know how he was feeling about returning to the show.
His answer? Very Tyler-esque, so prepare to swoon just a bit.
"There's a very beautiful young lady in Sacramento right now who's quarantining and who is patiently waiting for production on a show to pick back up and I've been waiting as well," he told us, "and I'm hoping after everything settles down and everyone is safe that I'll finally get to meet her. I'm looking forward to it."
We are too, Matt, we are too.
For now though, Matt will continue to practice social distancing with Tyler in Florida, along with several of Tyler's family members and their friends. Oh and Hannah Brown of course, with speculation running rampant about the former Bachelorette couple's relationships status.
While both Hannah and Tyler have recently said they are single, that didn't stopped them from seemingly fueling speculation about their relationship, including games of spin the bottle, poking fun at their time on The Bachelorette and just having fun on TikTok, with both having been through a lot recently: Tyler's mother Andrea Cameron's sudden death in early March and Hannah's younger brother's recent overdose.
A source close to the maybe-couple told us back in March that, "There is definite chemistry between Hannah and Tyler," a source shared with E! News. "They both have expressed they are not in a position to date right now but do care about each other."
Naturally, we had to ask the man who had been living with the pair for several weeks for the latest status update on Tyler and Hannah's relationship, with Hannah recently traveling back to Alabama to be with her family.
"You have to talk to them about that," Matt simply told us. "No comment!"
Hey, bros before journos, we get it, especially when you're as close as Matt and Tyler are and can spend weeks on end together without getting sick of one another.
"We haven't killed each other yet," Matt joked. "We spend so much time together. I learn so much from just being around him, being around his family and seeing how they've handled everything down here the last few months with their family."
And Matt had nothing but kind words for Hannah, who he called his "homie" and said he's "looking forward to reconnecting" with the Dancing With the Stars champ once it's safe to do so, once and for all squashing any bad blood that may have lingered after Hannah chose Jed over Tyler in her finale, a decision Matt obviously didn't support.
"She had to get back home, be with her family," he said. "We had a great time with her, but she's holding it down in Alabama right now."
For now, fans of "Myler" are getting a lot of great bromance content, courtesy of both former college football teammates' Instagram accounts and The Quarantine Crew TikTok account, including an accidental kiss and eating competitions.
But the Quarantine Crew, which has amassed almost 350,000 Instagram followers and over 560,000 TikTok followers, wasn't a planned social media strategy, with Matt explaining, "It just happened."
Based in New York City, where he shares an apartment with Tyler, Matt reached out to his friend early on to see when he would be back, only to learn he was going to be staying in Florida and said "we were more than welcome to come quarantine with him when things got crazy."
And that generous invitation is a "testament" to the type of person Tyler is, with Matt saying The Bachelorette fan-favorite is "opening his house to strangers, and using this to just positively impacting everyone around him with everything that his family has been going through with the loss of his mother and just continuing to be selfless and use his voice to amplify things."
The friendship is a two-way street through, a give and take, with Matt saying, "I'm just trying to be a good housemate, you know? Handle my role and responsibility whether that's fold laundry, doing the dishes, making everyone else's life easier, making cookies, making banana bread, doing everything I need to do to be a good roommate and a good quarantine member."
When it comes to the creative for the Quarantine Crew though, there are two other Camerons the group is relying on: Ryan Cameron and Austin Cameron, Tyler's younger brothers.
"Ryan is really the brains of that operation. He's the youngest in the house, so he's more tapped in to what's cool, what everyone is feeling, so we kind of rely on him and Austin," Matt said. "He and Ryan are super creative and they have a bunch of great ideas, so it's easy for us to execute when they have these great ideas."
You can work out with Matt and other stars as part of NEOU's 12-hour Fit-A-Thon on Thursday, April 23, beginning at at 7:30 a.m. ET, with the live-stream including a variety of instructor-led fitness classes throughout the day on its app, like bootcamp-styled workouts, yoga, dance, barre and recovery.