‘Bachelorette’ Jenn Tran ‘Wouldn’t Recommend’ Dating 25 Men At Once Behind The Easel
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00:00Dating 25 men at one time is not something anybody should do normally.
00:06I don't recommend it.
00:07I don't really know where I'm going with this, to be honest.
00:09The beautiful part is you can always turn something ugly not ugly at some point, I think.
00:14Oh, God.
00:16See, I'm already a train wreck. I'm knocking things over, God.
00:19I'm going to paint what love means to me, and I think it's going to be a mix of a sunrise-sunset situation here.
00:34To me, I usually go to the beach and watch a sunrise or a sunset to calm me.
00:39I really love the beach and the sound of the waves, and I just think love is supposed to be a calming feeling,
00:45but there's also times in which, you know, the waves crash in harder than you expect it to,
00:50but it's about kind of recovering from that and finding your ground a little bit.
00:55And in terms of the sunrise and the sunset, I think a sunrise is like, you know,
01:01the meaning of like a beautiful beginning of the day, and there's like so many ways you can go about it.
01:07And with a sunset, it's also like the end of something, but the sun's always going to rise again.
01:17So with love, it always comes back around.
01:20When I got the call to see if I wanted to be the Bachelor, I really had to think about it.
01:24It was, you know, a decision that had been in the back of my mind for a while
01:28because I had been doing meetings about it and stuff,
01:30and I just wasn't sure that I wanted everything that this role really entailed.
01:35It's no secret that, you know, your entire life is on display to the public,
01:39and I wasn't sure that I wanted that, but I knew that I wanted to find love.
01:42I'm a hopeless romantic, and I've always just wanted to find my person.
01:46Like, I would stay up at night in middle school and just like watch endless rom-coms wishing it was me.
01:52I know what I wanted, but I just wasn't sure if it was for me.
01:55But at the end of the day, I was like, I'm the kind of person that's going to take every opportunity,
02:00and I don't want to have any regrets in life.
02:02I've just never felt like a main character in my life,
02:05and that's due to like a lot of different reasons of like being Asian American
02:09and like being the first Asian American to be represented in the media.
02:12Like, that's a huge part of why I've never felt like my own main character is.
02:16I've never seen it done before, so here I am.
02:19Do you have some more white?
02:21You just want to blob a whole bunch on right there.
02:23Yeah.
02:24Thank you so much.
02:25Is that enough, or do you want more?
02:26A little more, please.
02:27Thank you.
02:28Being the first Asian American bachelorette, I was able to really bring my culture in to the season
02:32in a lot of different ways.
02:34One mainly being my family is on TV, and I'm bilingual, so I speak Vietnamese and English,
02:40and I'm so excited to be able to showcase that and show that side of me
02:44because not a lot of people know that I can speak Vietnamese,
02:47and, you know, we've never really seen a bilingual family before on the show.
02:51Other ways that I really spoke to being the first Asian American bachelorette, you know,
02:55when I thought about dating, I really thought about what I wanted in a lasting relationship,
03:00and a lot of those conversations that I wanted to have revolved around
03:03what it would look like having a half-Vietnamese kid, you know,
03:08and what that would mean to my partner.
03:10So a lot of those conversations were definitely being had
03:12because that's important to me to have in a partner is, like,
03:14someone who's open-minded about embracing my culture.
03:17My mom was like, please hire a fake mom.
03:19I'm not going on TV.
03:21But, no, they were really excited for me.
03:24I think they were nervous mostly just because they want the best for me,
03:28and it's not the most traditional way to go about finding love,
03:31and it's tough for people, I think, who haven't been on one side of it at least
03:36to know, like, how fast connections can really form and how it can really work.
03:40So it really just took a little bit of me explaining to them where I was coming from
03:43for them to come around, and now they're just so supportive and so excited about it all.
03:47With my mom, I think it's, like, every other day convincing type of deal.
03:52You know, it's like I know I'm not going to convince her in one conversation.
03:56It's kind of like priming her with each conversation.
03:59I wear her down a little bit more, and then she just starts to understand me more.
04:03So it was really about her understanding where I was coming from
04:06and me being able to kind of articulate all of my thoughts and emotions around it all.
04:11There was a piece of advice I kept thinking back to my friend.
04:14So she's married already, and she wanted to give a little bit of advice,
04:18and she wrote me a letter that I was reading while I was filming every now and then.
04:22And the third bullet point was, you know, your man's always going to think
04:27you're the funniest girl in the room no matter what.
04:31Even if you're not funny, he's always going to think you're the funniest girl in the room.
04:34And for me, like, that was really important because it touches on a lot more than just humor
04:39but also intentional wanting to make somebody feel good.
04:43And I think for me, I've always dated men who didn't always have my best interest at heart.
04:47And so for me, I really just wanted to make sure that I was dating someone
04:51who really loved me for me and not some version of me.
04:56So before I started filming The Bachelorette, I had a phone call with Michelle Young.
05:01And, you know, I really wanted to reach out to a former bachelorette whose season I watched
05:05and also who is a person of color because I really wanted to know her standpoint on everything
05:10and really be able to get a feel for how she felt about it all.
05:14Obviously, there's a lot of drama.
05:16And for me, I usually stay pretty calm within the storm.
05:21I like to say I'm pretty level-headed.
05:23And when I make up my mind about a situation, I'm pretty stern on it.
05:28So once I've made my mind up about where the situation was going to go,
05:32I was pretty stern about how I was going to attack that.
05:34But also in certain times, you know, if, like, the boys were fighting it out or something,
05:38I was like, I'll let them be. Let a boy be a boy.
05:41And it's nice to kind of observe how people problem-solve, right?
05:44Because that's how you really get to know them.
05:46In my previous dating relationship history, I subconsciously went for guys who, you know,
05:51weren't giving me everything that I wanted because I liked that fight-or-flight feeling
05:57and I liked that chase because of kind of the way I grew up.
06:01I just didn't really have a role model of love, and I always thought that I had to work for love.
06:05And so when I started going into these relationships, I just thought that that was what you needed to do.
06:10But after a few toxic relationships, I think I learned that that's not really what I want.
06:15And I think that I want someone who's going to love me easily.
06:18Some red flags that I had were, you know, a man who's insecure and can't be happy for your successes
06:24the same way they are for their own successes, or someone who isn't emotionally intelligent.
06:30That's huge to have somebody so self-aware and be able to work through problems themselves
06:35and with you in a rational manner.
06:37Green flags for me were emotionally intelligent and someone who is as thoughtful as I am
06:42and who is as caring as I am.
06:45Do you have some more white?
06:46Yeah.
06:47More blue, please?
06:48I'm really going for it.
06:50Wait, can I have a yellow, too?
06:52Or an orange.
06:53I'm trying to make a masterpiece.
06:55I don't really know where I'm going with this, to be honest.
06:57It's abstract.
06:58My painting is looking very abstract at the moment.
07:02I think it's all in the process.
07:05And the beautiful part is you can always turn something ugly not ugly at some point.
07:11I think.
07:13Dating 25 men at one time is not something anybody should do normally.
07:19I don't recommend it.
07:20I think it's definitely a process and it's a lot of, I think, mental strength.
07:27I really had to try to compartmentalize a lot of these relationships.
07:31When I was with somebody else or having a conversation,
07:33I was just trying to really stay present in each conversation
07:36and explore each relationship in the extent that they needed to be explored in.
07:40It definitely was not an easy feat.
07:42I learned so much about myself through the journey.
07:45I really think it was such a huge learning experience for me
07:49to learn about what I want in a relationship and what I need.
07:53But really what I think that I was most proud of myself for
07:57was learning that it's OK to have a voice.
08:00I think oftentimes as women, we can shy away from being too stern about something
08:05because we think that we might seem too manly or too manipulative.
08:10I really feel like I found my voice throughout this journey.
08:13I'm stressing very much.
08:15So I feel like this isn't a fair judgment of my painting skills.
08:18If you had one out of context word, that's a spoiler.
08:22But we wouldn't know it's a spoiler until after the show came out.
08:25What would that word be?
08:27That's so interesting.
08:31I have to be very careful with my words here.
08:33A spoiler.
08:35I'm going to say ocean.
08:38Oh, that ties into your painting.
08:40Yeah, yeah, let's go with that. Let's go with ocean.
08:42I will say this is that I don't think that everybody has the one.
08:48I don't believe in soulmates necessarily.
08:52I don't think that there's just one person on this earth for everybody.
08:56I think that there can be multiple people.
08:58And I think that it depends on the trajectory of your life and their life.
09:02And it's a really beautiful thing when the timing works out for two people.
09:06But maybe it wasn't meant to work out for certain people.
09:09So I really think timing is everything.
09:12I do believe in love.
09:14I just don't think that there's one person out there for everybody.
09:17I think there could be multiple matches.
09:19I can't really speak to the love part.
09:21But I can definitely say that everything that happened on my season,
09:25I'm very proud of.
09:27And I'm very excited to watch it all back.
09:31And I know that everything panned out the way it was supposed to.
09:34And I'm very happy.
09:37You know, it's not my best work.
09:39If I were to name it, it would be named unfinished.
09:43Oh, God.
09:45I'm already a train wreck.
09:46I'm knocking things over, God.
09:48So this is my masterpiece.
09:50It's a sunrise or a sunset up for interpretation, just like love is.
09:54You know, it's not necessarily finished.
09:56But it's very colorful.
09:58There's a lot of colors to it.
10:00Just like there's a lot of different meanings to love.
10:02And you can take it in a lot of different ways.
10:04And I'll leave it at that.
10:06I'll leave it at that.