The glow that surrounded Gerry Turner on the initial season of The Golden Bachelor started to fade a little just ahead of the finale, when a report surfaced that contradicted what Turner had said about his dating life after his wife Toni died. While the widower was portrayed on television as having no semblance of romance in his life after 2017, that turned out not to be the full truth, and Nick Viall — a former lead of The Bachelor himself — pulled no punches when discussing why it was hard for him to watch the initial season of Bachelor Nation’s newest spinoff.
A day before Gerry Turner’s proposal to Theresa Nist aired on ABC during The Golden Bachelor’s finale, a story broke in which an anonymous woman said she’d been in a three-year relationship with Turner after Toni’s death and that they’d lived together for over a year. Season 21 Bachelor Nick Viall — who also appeared on two seasons of The Bachelorette and one season of Bachelor in Paradise — had some strong words about the conflicting narratives when he spoke on Page Six’s Virtual Reali-Tea podcast. Viall said:
It is tough to watch an entire season of Gerry selling this narrative that all he’s been doing since the passing of his wife was cry, play pickleball and occasionally having like this weird one-on-one moment with some hand lotion, you know? That’s all he’s been doing. And in reality, we come to find out that the body was barely cold before he started dating. And it opens up a lot of questions about what was going on.
Gerry Turner has denied that he tried to bury his dating history, and sources have said the women on his season were aware of the relationship referenced in the THR article, but there’s no doubt that ABC really wanted to portray Turner as a hero. The Golden Bachelor was groundbreaking in its portrayal of grief and loss, and Nick Viall theorized that the 72-year-old leaned into the character that the network crafted for him in order to tell a story of hope.
As a former lead, The Viall Files host understands how the Bachelor franchise works, admitting to Page Six that they like to “oversimplify their characters.” Nick Viall continued:
The show itself sometimes tries to craft a narrative about their leads that even the leads are a little uncomfortable with because it almost feels like, ‘I’m not that squeaky clean,’ type of thing. Because no one really is, right, you know? Sometimes that is the fault of the show, this kind of narrative.
In the end, Nick Viall called The Golden Bachelor “very inspiring,” saying that Gerry Turner made a more optimistic show by celebrating his late wife rather than rehashing the relationships that hadn’t worked since she died. And he admitted that to our knowledge, Turner didn’t even do anything wrong, saying:
He was allowed to date. He didn’t cheat on anyone from what we know. There was no overlap, even [if] the timeline is a little tight.
Regardless of the twists and turns that got him to this point, Gerry Turner is about to be married again, and we’re all invited to watch the ceremony. The Golden Wedding is set to air live on ABC, starting at 8 p.m. ET Monday, January 4, and you can see what else is coming our way in the new year by checking out our 2024 TV schedule.
