Jen Schefft says her family is excited about her starring in the next round of “The Bachelorette,” which will include camera crews coming to their home.
“Luckily, they’ve done it before,” said the 28-year-old Schefft, who made a match on “The Bachelor” in 2003 with Andrew Firestone.
Their relationship didn’t last, so why on earth has she turned to reality TV to find love again?
“I asked myself the same question at the beginning,” Schefft said from her Chicago home. “I just couldn’t say no. … It’s a great opportunity to meet someone.”
It’s also an opportunity that will be different from that of the shows’ other bachelors and bachelorettes. Schefft is helping to cast the 25 bachelors from which she will choose.
Although the producers will weed out some candidates, Schefft said of the final 25: “I’ll know each of them or have talked to them or have seen them on tape before the show starts.”
But she’s still working from a pool of guys who are searching for love on reality TV.
“Not to paint all reality contestants with the same brush,” Wade Paulsen of the Web site Reality TV World wrote recently, “but we merely want to suggest to Jen that perhaps wannabe reality-TV stars aren’t the right group in which to find many people who aren’t self-centered and self-absorbed.”
Does Schefft–regular cover fodder for Us and People magazines–really have trouble meeting men?
“It’s easy to meet people,” she said. “It’s not always easy to meet the right person.”
ABC has called Schefft “a hopeless romantic,” and she still sounds a little wistful about things not working out with Firestone. After they broke up, she said, “I wasn’t interested in dating. I’ve never been much of a dater.” (Even her link to Bill Rancic reportedly lasted just four dates.)
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So what will she be looking for in candidates as “The Bachelorette”?
“It sounds cliched,” she said, “but I’m looking for someone with a great sense of humor, who is down to earth, someone who gets me.”
“I know exactly what they’re going through,” Schefft said of her “Bachelorette” suitors. “I’ll be sensitive to what they’re going through. … I know that I have to do it, but it’s not going to be easy.”
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale ([email protected]) and Kris Karnopp ([email protected])