Perhaps it's true that money can't buy love, but money can make eligible singles more willing to look for love on TV.
On the first episode of his Trading Secrets podcast that launched Monday, May 24, Bachelor Nation's Jason Tartick welcomed franchise alum Dean Unglert. During their chat, the pair discussed how much money they were each offered to appear on Bachelor in Paradise back in the day.
Dean, who first competed for Rachel Lindsay's roses on The Bachelorette season 13 that aired in 2017, said he was inclined to accept the show's initial monetary offer before friends encouraged him to negotiate for a bigger sum.
"They hit me up, and they're like, 'Hey, do you want to do Bachelor in Paradise, this other show? It pays $400 bucks a day, and you could be there for up to 30 days, or something like that,'" Dean shared. "So I was like, 'Oh, yeah, great. Four hundred bucks a day, 30 days, $12,000—that's fantastic.' And then I start talking to some friends, and they're like, 'Well, you should get more money because you're ... who they want most from your season to go to Paradise, minus Peter [Kraus].'"
Dean said he then asked for $800 a day before producers counter-offered with $600, which was fine with him. "It could've been one dollar more," he explained. He then added with a laugh, "But out of principle, I wanted them to pay me more than they were offering everybody else, just because I thought I was hot s--t or something."
The reality TV mainstay later appeared on The Bachelor Winter Games in early 2018, and he told Jason he was paid $400 a day for that one, which filmed over fewer days. Dean and Lesley Murphy started dating on Winter Games but didn't get engaged and split up shortly after it aired.
Dean's first stint on Paradise was notoriously thorny, as he received flak for juggling relationships with both Kristina Schulman and Danielle Lombard. Given the negative attention he received, he told Jason he asked for "$20,000 an episode or some absurd amount" to return for another round of Paradise, although he obviously didn't end up getting that much.
"When I said it, too, I was so vindicated. I was like, They're not going to get me for a dollar less than what I need," he recalled. "And then eventually, as time wore on, I said, 'Screw it.' I think I went down to like $602 a day."
As it turned out, the payoff wasn't just monetary, given that he started dating Caelynn Miller-Keyes during that season, and the couple is still going strong.
For his part, Jason—an alum of Becca Kufrin's The Bachelorette season 14 from 2018—explained he had actually negotiated to appear on Bachelor in Paradise in 2018 for $600 a day, with a $5,000 guarantee in case he didn't make it beyond the first week. But he ultimately opted not to participate, and as luck would have it, he started dating his current fiancée, Kaitlyn Bristowe, in early 2019.
Jason and Dean also discussed their offers to become the potential lead of The Bachelor. Jason said that when he was in the running with fellow The Bachelorette season 14 standouts Blake Horstmann and Colton Underwood to become the season 23 lead, all three were offered $100,000, and Colton ultimately landed the gig.
Meanwhile, Dean said he had a contract to make $75,000 as the season 22 Bachelor, but the role went to Arie Luyendyk Jr.