With Thursday’s episode of The Bachelorette veering into historic territory for Clare Crawley and the franchise as a whole, the leading lady admitted a bit of intel to Chris Harrison during a candid chat within the first few minutes: As viewers have long surmised, Crawley indeed stalked Dale Moss on social media prior to the start of filming, and began to preemptively fall in love with him through a loop of clicks and scrolls. “When we first stopped filming because of COVID and had to go into quarantine, everything was kind of stacked against me. I couldn’t have contact with anybody,†Crawley tearfully explained. “I would look at all of the guys’ social media pages just to see what kind of guys were coming on, which kind of guys I would be with, and I was excited. But when I would see Dale’s, it was just was like … he was someone I could see hanging out with. I like what he talks about, I like what he’s interested in.â€
Crawley recalled a specific tipping point that amplified her feelings to Moss, which occurred on Mother’s Day. “I happened to look at his social media and it was close to the anniversary that his mom passed away, and I could just relate so much and my heart was so heavy for him,†Crawley, whose father died in 2004, said. “My heart went out for him. I would see his sister in a care facility and I relate to that, because my mom’s in the same situation. It was so parallel, it was definitely built up before we got here.â€
However, upon being urged by Harrison not to feed him “bullshit†with her responses, Crawley insisted that she and Moss never communicated prior to the show. “Not one bit, not one word. I swear on my dad’s grave,†she responded. “I totally am head over heels for Dale. He’s amazing. I feel like maybe the inverse was working in our favor.†This was echoed later in the episode, when Crawley, locked in a post-coital (…) embrace with Moss, joked that “we should take a lie detector test, because nobody will believe us.†Much gratitude to both for providing us with a perfect election distraction.