Australia’s New Bachelor Jimmy Confirms He’s In Love & Talks About The ‘Dramatic’ New Season
Not all Bachelors were created equal.
Since the start of The Bachelor in Australia, we’ve had a real mix of men standing in the role: from the wholesome types, like Tim Robards and Sam Wood, the charming and funny Matty J, and the run of “celebrity” style Bachelors like the Honey Badger and Locky Gilbert.
Thankfully, this year it feels like we’ve gone back to the show’s premise of setting up unknown people on a journey to find love. The 2021 series of The Bachelor will see a mystery man named Jimmy Nicholson take on the job. Jimmy is a 31-year-old pilot who hails from the Northern Beaches of Sydney and is of New Zealand and Fijian heritage. After a turbulent year (no pun intended), it was the whole global pandemic that made Jimmy realise he was ready to look for love again, and what better way to look than by being deemed the most eligible Bachelor in Australia.
View this post on Instagram
Dating during the global pandemic may be hard enough, but even our Bachy realised the world of dating apps wasn’t cutting it for him anymore either.
“The biggest learning experience for me was there were no phones, there were none of those peripheral things we normally use when it comes to dating – we get our phones out and stalk someone on the gram or you see mutual followers, or you go through old stories or you see them on Facebook… for me the whole Bachelor experience was very raw, it’s really just you and that other person.
You don’t have fact-checking, you don’t know if they’ve hooked up with someone you know or any of that stuff — it’s just the two of you. Yes, it’s television, but it feels old-school with all that stuff taken out of it, it’s authentic.
Nowadays there’s too much phone or fact-checking going on, so I think people feel disheartened they can’t meet anyone and it’s tough trying to meet someone on the apps,” Jimmy told Punkee.
That’s not to say he didn’t have his hesitancy when it came to the world of dating shows.
“I was approached, I had a message on Instagram one day from a talent scout and they said ‘hey would you be interested in going on a dating show?’ And so I replied… which one? [laughs]. When I found out it was The Bach – I had watched a couple of episodes before from some previous ones so I wouldn’t say I am that Bach current – but I do know there’s been a lot of successful love stories to come out of it. I certainly wouldn’t go on a TV show if I wasn’t ready to meet someone, so I thought, ‘yep, let’s do it’ and one thing led to another.”
The promos for the upcoming season, set to debut on July 21, have shown Jimmy to be quite a family man and if you take a look over his Instagram page, the same values shine through. His cousin and sister even came in as part of a group date to meet some of the girls, and his parents will also feature in the upcoming series. Jimmy credits his mum to helping him through the emotional turmoil of being the leading man in an unconventional dating scenario.
View this post on Instagram
“I was able to make some phone calls to my mum every couple of weeks, we’re very close, and she came in to the Bach pad to hang out one day and the executive producer allowed me to talk freely about all of the girls which helped me,” Jimmy said. “My family is featured pretty heavily throughout the show, they’re quite invested and they want me to meet someone, and they want to make sure I’m making the right decisions – I mean, I want to make sure I’m making the right decisions too and it’s important to have my family’s support.”
And ultimately, the process has worked for Jimmy who has found love and is very smitten since filming wrapped, with the show organising for Jimmy and his new love to meet up in secret locations to keep the spark alive until the big finale.
“It’s worked out really well for me, I’m really, really happy. I couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. It’s nice to be able to sit there and genuinely say I’ve met someone I love and that I’m really happy with. I think everybody needs a love story right now after the last year!
I have seen her a lot, we get a couple of secret rendezvous every now and then.
We’re both picked up in the middle of the night in different cars and get to go to a secret location for a few days and it’s really great.
I’ve spent a fair bit of time with her – it’s since filming that we’re just hanging out one-on-one and I think that’s the make or break for the relationship. We’re just stronger and stronger every time we see each other.”
While he might be the star of the show, Jimmy is also keen to sit back and watch the finished product, hinting that there was a lot of drama that he wasn’t necessarily across when it happened.
“After coming out and speaking with my girl, we talked through it all and I’m like ‘wait, what happened?!'” Jimmy laughed.
You’ll see at one point during the show it kind of came to a boiling point to me, so there was a fair bit of drama revolved around that and I had one of those moments where I was like ‘OK I think I see what’s happening here.’
And also since finishing the show, and speaking to my girl and hearing about it all… I’ve realised there was a lot that went down. With some of it, I was none the wiser.”
View this post on Instagram
The task of becoming The Bachelor is a daunting one – with the eyes of the nation on you, you can quickly become Australia’s most beloved son or the public’s number one enemy. We’ve seen former Bachelors like Blake Garvey and the Honey Badger be vilified after their less than successful stints, while others like Matt Agnew and Richie Strahan disappeared from the public eye. Jimmy himself has no real interest in switching up his everyday life and won’t be paying attention to the trolls or slew of online comments that come with being on the show.
“One thing for me is I have enough mates in my life and I’ve got a job I’ve worked really hard to get to. So I don’t see myself as any different, I’m just a normal person who now has been on a TV show. I didn’t want anything to change me. I’m back at work and, yes, I’m getting a lot of questions about the show and I’m pretty used to talking about my feelings after three months of filming! The one challenge for me is just walking through the terminal when I get to work, you can’t really fly under the radar there, but it’s all OK at this stage.”
With The Bachelor hitting our screens soon, and some of the country still in lockdown and battling scary COVID-19 outbreaks, as Jimmy previously stated, we’re all ready for a love story and some drama to distract us.
Asked to sum up his season in a few words, this is what Jimmy had for us. “Love – because it’s worked out for me. Drama – because there’s a lot of it. And well, cheese platters because there’s a lot!” he laughed.
–
Jimmy’s season of The Bachelor starts Wednesday, July 21 at 7:30pm on Channel 10.