ABC's reality chief talks The Bachelor's evolution with Colton Underwood and the five-way tie for Bachelorette

The Hollywood Reporter

"The Bachelor can’t exist in a vacuum, and it always has to evolve," says Rob Mills, ABC's senior vice president of alternative series, who's been overseeing The Bachelor franchise for a long time. "Maybe on this new WarnerMedia streaming service they’ll put all the seasons of The Bachelor on there and you can see how The Bachelor in 2002, 2007, 2012 and then in 2019 all look very different. You absolutely see the evolution. I don’t think we want to abandon the fairy-tale aspect, just because we love it and it is the belief in true love." As for picking Hannah Brown to become the next Bachelorette, Mills says she was the best of five of Colton's bachelorettes who were in contention. "And they were all great," he says, "but there was something about Hannah B. Part of it was that she thought she was the dark horse, so she came in and had nothing to lose, saying, 'I don’t know, I’m just going to be myself.' There was just something different that we hadn’t seen in a Bachelorette before. Very kind of charming and goofy." ALSO: Mills says "I don’t think there was any really conversation" with Khloe Kardashian about becoming The Bachelorette, despite creator Mike Fleiss' tweets.