#Chris Harrison ‘stepping aside’ from Matt James’ season

While Chris Harrison may still be a part of The Bachelor franchise moving forward, it looks as though change may be in order — at least for the remainder of Matt James’ season.

In a new post on Instagram, the show host makes it clear that he is “stepping aside” temporarily from the franchise, and will not be a part of the upcoming After the Final Rose event. Presumably the Women Tell All special has already been filmed, and that will go on as previously planned.

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So what does this departure stem from? It comes down to a recent interview Harrison gave to Extra with former contestant Rachel Lindsay, one where he discussed the offensive past actions of contestant/current frontrunner Rachael Kirkconnell. Instead of taking the situation seriously, he downplayed it entirely:

 “We all need to have a little grace, a little understanding, a little compassion. I’ve seen some stuff online, again this ‘judge jury executioner’ thing where people are just tearing this girl’s life apart and diving into her parents and her parents’ voting record … It’s unbelievably alarming to watch this.”

This comment led to an initial apology from Chris, which then led into the initial apology and the new statement below. Since the interview first happened, Rachel Lindsay has discussed stepping away from the franchise entirely (see her Higher Learning podcast with Van Lathan). A number of other past and current contestants (including Matt James) have come out in support of Lindsay. Chris claims that he does not want to be a distraction to the remainder of the season, but the issue is this: If Rachael does make it to the end, the distraction will still very much be there.

What do you think about Chris Harrison temporarily stepping away from The Bachelor?

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This article was written by Jessica Carter. Be sure to follow her on Twitter.