Jenn Tran is ready for romance as the first Asian-American Bachelorette
Love is in the air when a new season of The Bachelorette begins this week, kicking off with a brand-new, history-making season featuring Jenn Tran, a student in Miami’s Barry University physician assistant program and the show’s first Asian-American lead.
After making a splash on Joey Graziadei’s season of The Bachelor, Tran became a fan favourite with Bachelor Nation. She spent several weeks getting to know Graziadei, a professional tennis coach, before being sent home in the final rose ceremony before the all-important hometown dates.
While she may not have “won” that season, Tran got so much more when she was announced as the next Bachelorette during the “After the Final Rose” special back in March, crowned by Bachelorette predecessor Charity Lawson, whose love story ended in a heartwarming onscreen engagement.
New Jersey native Tran, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam before she was born, has lived in the midwest and Florida to attend undergraduate and master’s school, but is looking forward to finding love abroad.
“I don’t know where we’re going yet, but I can’t wait to find out,” Tran told Entertainment Tonight shortly after she was named Bachelorette. She revealed her lifelong holiday dream, saying, “I’ve always wanted to go to Africa my entire life. I love animals and I would love to go out in the sanctuaries, go on lots of safari rides, all that stuff. So maybe that’s in the cards.”
She also shared some details about what viewers can expect to see. “We’re really breaking the mold this season,” Tran said, connecting her monumental season with a major change to the norms of the Bachelor franchise. As fans will recall, season 28 of The Bachelor featured the final rose ceremony at Agora Hills, California home known as “Bachelor Mansion.”
“I feel like a new mansion is the perfect way to break the mold . . . I’m gonna bless it with some really good vibes,” Tran promised.
The new setting of the franchise is now Hummingbird Nest Ranch, which served a similar function in the 2020 musical dating show Listen to Your Heart, but will now become the new home for The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and its spinoffs (The Golden Bachelorette is set to debut in the fall, while ABC is reportedly on the hunt for a second Golden Bachelor).
Meanwhile, the 25 eligible bachelors vying for Tran’s heart have come from far and wide (two contestants are from Canada!) to file into the new mansion and make their best first impressions.
Among Tran’s many suitors are an aerospace engineer from Tulsa, a Vancouver real estate broker who’s described as “a bit of a thrill seeker,” a Florida aesthetics consultant who’s declared he “loves Botox and doesn’t care who knows it,” a physiotherapist from Toronto, an Arizona sommelier, and two former athletes — one of whom played in the NBA, and another with the XFL.
In the midst of all the hot-tubbing, rose ceremonies and fantasy-suite shenanigans that will no doubt take place, Tran promised viewers that she hasn’t lost sight of the trailblazing role she’s taken on within the world of reality television.
“I’m inspiring a generation of young women, Asian women, who maybe didn’t see themselves as the main character, didn’t see themselves as able to find love,” she said during an interview with Good Morning America. “And now I’m able to represent that.”
The Bachelorette airs Monday, July 8 on City & ABC