According to TMZ, Johnson and Claybrooks went to an audition for the role of bachelor in a Nashville hotel. When they arrived, a producer asked what Johnson was doing there and they were taken to the side of the room. The plaintiffs claimed they were left out of the normal audition process and were not called back because of their race.
ABC, Warner Horizon Television, Next Entertainment, NZK Productions and creator Mike Fleiss will all be named in a class action lawsuit to be filed in the federal court on Wednesday morning. They also schedule a news conference to talk about the issue afterwards.
The lawsuit has a strong argument because in ten years of the show and 23 seasons, neither "The Bachelor" nor "The Bachelorette" has featured a single person of color. Fleiss once talked about including someone not white with EW, saying "We always want to cast for ethnic diversity, it's just that for whatever reason, they don't come forward. I wish they would."
