The Bachelor is officially back, and it’s Grant Ellis’ turn to hand out the roses — and break down the biggest premiere moments with Us Weekly.
Season 29 (yes, 29!) of the ABC dating series premiered on Monday, January 27, reintroducing Bachelor Nation to Grant, the basketball player-turned-day trader. Fans first met Grant during his six-episode (seven, if you count the Men Tell All) stint on Jenn Tran’s season 21 of The Bachelorette.
“I’m Grant, I’m 30, I live in Houston, Texas, and I’m your next Bachelor,” Grant, who was 30 at the time of filming but turned 31 in December, declared while dancing to Salt-N-Pepa’s “Whatta a Man.”
When the iconic girl group stops singing, viewers meet Grant’s family, including his mother, who signed him up for the show, and his dad, who has struggled with addiction in the past. It’s a slight whiplash to go from Grant dancing in front of a brick wall to crash course on his family, but Us thinks it’s a good sign that we got to know more about Grant in the first five minutes of the episode than we’ve gotten to know about some leads all season. He’s got a goofy side, loves to dance and sing (but not in a Clayton way) and he’s been through some real adversity.
“You get the Grant who loves music and that’s happy,” Grant told Us in an interview before the premiere. “But then you also get a Grant that’s going through a struggle and is relearning himself and who’s going through kind of like a therapy session and it’s unfolding in front of the cameras. So it’s definitely a lot of things that happen and a lot about me learning myself.”
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It’s not long before the infamous limo entrances start, with the 25 women picked to meet Grant pulling out all the usual stops. A woman named Rose (appropriate!) is first, followed by Litia with a bejeweled basketball and J’Nae who also played into the basketball of it all with a LeBron James-inspired bottle of powdered chalk in the air.
When asked by Us for his top three limo entrances, Grant first named Sarafiena. “[She] had the giant cutout of my head,” he said. “And then the llama entrance, the no-drama-llama [that Alexe brought]. All of the entrances were good, but off the top of my head, those two stood out.”
Grant noted that he believes the limo entrances are “a look into somebody’s personality” and “their sense of humor,” adding that there isn’t anything he was hoping to avoid.
“Whatever anybody did I would’ve been OK with. I would, maybe, judge a little bit,” he said with a laugh. “If somebody would’ve come and, like, slapped me or something, that would’ve been something I wouldn’t have wanted. But other than that, I would’ve been cool with it.” (Long before Grant’s time watching the franchise, season 15 Bachelor Brad Womack was slapped by Chantal O’Brien “on behalf of America” after he didn’t pick anyone during his first stint as the lead on season 11.)
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Back to the episode, Carolina joked about dating a DJ — “a moment of silence because how dumb?!” — in her package as Chloie opened up about being a plus-size model in her intro segment. “I would never be a size 0 and I’m proud of it,” the Midwest native, who showed Grant her ruby slippers as part of her limo entrance, told the cameras. Social media manager Bailey had Grant take photos of her, which would’ve been an immediate “here for the wrong reasons” if this was 2015, and Zoe brought full Grant and Zoe merch — a.k.a a T-shirt with their faces on it — that they used a T-shirt gun to send into the mansion.
Two women appeared to leave Grant nearly speechless with their respective jaw-dropping sparkly gowns. Dina, who spoke about her “beautiful” hands (which she made sure to point out are a size 6 when it comes to rings), and Juliana, who brought Grant a cannoli to eat Lady and the Tramp style. Later in the episode, Grant and Juliana, a client service associate from Massachusetts, played the piano together.
“I think that we definitely related over music. I think that was something that really stood out to me,” Grant told Us. “She’s somebody who’s really cool and we definitely vibed over that.”
“There were a lot of great women that I vibed with the first night and first impressions mean a lot,” he continued. “But there’s so much time between the first night and some of the group dates that happen and some of the one-on-one dates that I get to really learn each and every one of these women.”
There was also plenty of kissing going down, something Grant didn’t plan but didn’t shy away from in the moment.
“Going in there, I told myself, ‘I’m not gonna try to kiss too many people.’ But then you sit there with these amazing women and you’re looking for your person and some of them you start to vibe with,” he told Us. “And I think that a connection just happens. It’s not like you could make a plan for it, it just happens. So with me it was just, ‘Whatever happens, happens.’ And I’m not gonna force it, but I’m gonna go with the flow.”
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Us counted seven makeout moments, with Rose’s blindfolded Ghost moment standing out.
“Rose is a sweetheart,” he told Us, joking that his blindfolded clay project was “just as bad” as hers. “And we had a really good time, some really good conversation and I got to know a little bit more about her that first night.”
Before the end of the night, a surprise guest was teased, with the women spiraling over speculation that one of Grant’s exes was joining the cast. “Who is this person?” “Who’s the new bitch?” “Miss girl comes in, tall, beautiful, like, OMG I cannot compare to this woman.” “She walked out this way, like vagina first, walking like she was on a mission.”
It was a fake out, however, with the mystery woman turning out to be Grant’s sister.
“We definitely can [forgive them],” Grant told Us. “I understand their reactions [to] somebody new coming into the house and when they find out it’s my sister, everything goes well.”
While the women (notably Natalie, who had previous trauma, and Juliana, who thought it was fake) were afraid of the llama, it ended up securing Alexe the first impression rose. In a new twist, host Jesse Palmer revealed that the coveted flower also gave Alexe the first one-on-one date.
“Our chemistry was there. It’s pretty evident that we were, you know, going back and forth — we’re laughing, we’re joking, we’re having fun, and she made me laugh,” he told Us. “A lot of the women I laugh with, but there was something about that first night that from the llama to our sense of humor and it was a combination of things that made me give out that rose [to Alexe].”
In the end, Grant sent seven women packing, meaning there’s 18 contestants remaining. Based on the trailer — and Us’ interview with Jesse — fans should be prepared to watch one of the most torn Bachelors in history when it comes to giving out his final rose.
“In my life, I’m a really decisive person, but when it comes to matters of the heart and when it comes to letting people down, I struggle with that sometimes,” Grant told Us. “So even from night one, I didn’t wanna send people home, but it’s something I had to do. And then when you couple that with the amazing women that are on the season, it becomes really hard. And then you add to that, the absence and the lack of time that you have — it’s definitely difficult, but it’s not a theme throughout the whole season. It really is something that happens toward the end with a woman that I really, really developed relationships with.”
Elsewhere in the teaser, the expected drama appears to involve several of the women.
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“My plan for dealing with drama is [the same with] how I approach life. I’ll wait for things to play out and I make a decision when I have the full body of evidence, you know, I don’t try to rush it,” he told Us. “That’s something that I really tried to do. That was my plan. There is some drama, but I think that coming to a resolution and focusing on the dating aspect and finding my person was my goal.”
As for whether he’s engaged, Grant can only tell Us: “I’m always happy. … I’m happy with life and I’m happy with the way that things are going and the way that things played out.”
The Bachelor airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
