The Bachelorette star and broadcaster tore up her life plan and found a whole new world
For Rachel Lindsay, it’s not enough to just think outside the box. “I’m dancing on top of it, actually,” says the reality television pioneer and popular podcaster of her unconventional career path.
The former attorney who became ABC’s celebrated first Black lead on the hit show The Bachelorette almost by accident has some advice for anyone with a life plan: “Rip it up, tear it up and just move in a way that is purposeful and for things that give you passion . . . because you only have one life to live, and so you have to ask the question, whose life is it that you’re living?”
Since throwing over what others might have expected of her, Lindsay says she has taken more risks but never been happier, even when things haven’t worked out as she might have hoped. “I’m going through things personally,” she says with a nod to off-camera events that made headlines earlier this year, “but I’m trying to look at it as I’m going through them for a reason. I feel like there’s a purpose, and I’m meant to help other people as I go . . . ”
Lindsay made what she describes as her first “left turn,” a shift that took her off the beaten path, after she had graduated from Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee and took a job with a Texas law firm. Still nursing wounds from a relationship breakup, she was surprised when two coworkers told her she needed to apply for a spot on The Bachelor, for which auditions were taking place soon nearby.
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Only vaguely aware of the show—“The only thing I know about [it] is that Black people don’t go far”—she laughed off the suggestion. “I couldn’t see it in the moment, but they could see something in me that I couldn’t see for myself,” she says now. “And I can’t explain it, but I was captivated by what they were saying.”
Still not totally sure if this was something she should do, Lindsay almost bailed on doing the audition but stayed at the tryouts thinking “it would be a fun story I could tell.” She ended up not only being selected for the 21st season of The Bachelor but finishing third on lead Nick Viall’s list for a wife. Then she was the first Black woman to be selected for The Bachelorette, choosing and later marrying chiropractor Bryan Abasolo in its 13th season.
Those appearances paved the way for varied broadcasting gigs, including co-hosting the Higher Learning podcast with Van Lathan. Episodes like the recent “Young Voters, Blackface, and O.J.’s Past and Passing” and “The Mastery of ‘Cowboy Carter’ and the Complexity of the Black Experience” hint at the wide range of topics. The Ringer’s twice-weekly show tackling Black culture, political and sports issues of the day offers “some of the smartest conversations in the community,” according to one reviewer. Another has applauded the pair for their “nuance, integrity, and recognizing the humanity of all people in the content you’re putting out.”
The co-hosts were brought together by The Ringer founder Bill Simmons, who approached her on the strength of some other media work she’d done and thought she and the former TMZ correspondent would work together well as two “disruptors.” “He brought us together and we immediately clicked,” Lindsay recalls. “The chemistry you see us have on the podcast, we’ve had that from the first moment that we met, and we had this lunch.”
Lindsay is proud of the community that has been created at Higher Learning. “It’s unlike anything, the way people reach out to us, the way we give advice, but they give advice to us,” she says. “There’s this whole back and forth and it’s really beautiful.” Originally, the vision for the podcast had been “a lot lighter,” but launching in 2020—amid the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd—it ended up being “a space for people to come where you could voice your opinion, you could cry, you could express your frustration . . . the entire platform, I feel, has the purpose of waymaking.”
Ignoring the noise
In addition to Higher Learning, Lindsay also presents the Morally Corrupt podcast, which follows the latest reality TV news. She has also been an Emmy-nominated Extra correspondent, hosted sports shows for ESPN and Amazon, and appeared as a guest on everything from The Steve Harvey Show to Jimmy Kimmel Live.
In her 2022 book Miss Me with That: Hot Takes, Helpful Tidbits and a Few Hard Truths, she shares some of her life lessons: “I wanted people to see that I am not perfect, and I didn’t have this perfect journey to get here. This was not a part of my plan.” She followed that title with last year’s novel Real Love (“a vibrant tale of self-discovery”: Publishers Weekly).
Getting real about reality TV
How much of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette was real and how much was scripted?
“Fair question,” says Rachel Lindsay. “My experience very much so felt reality; I feel like what you saw was me. I got to be myself. They didn’t really play with me like that.”
There was some external direction: “‘Hey, we really like this guy’s storyline. You’ve got to give him a one-on-one,’” she reveals. “So, there were some people that I gave attention to that I didn’t want to, but they wanted to create something. And so that was scripted, but our conversations weren’t scripted. I might’ve been prompted like, ‘Hey, maybe ask him about what it was like growing up,’ and then they would say what they wanted to say. And my response was real as well. My confessionals were real. They didn’t take what I said and move it over here. I didn’t go through that.
Lindsay went to law school after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in sports management. She had plans to become a sports agent but realized that “wasn’t for me” after an internship. Reassessing, she went to get her JD, knowing that “the law was not forever for me. I didn’t know what forever looked like—I still don’t think I know—but it wasn’t law.”
“I like to surround myself with people that I trust—family and friends.”
As a Bachelorette groundbreaker, Lindsay was aware of the additional scrutiny she was under, both from the show’s audience and the Black community “making sure that I’m representing them in the right way.” While she feels a responsibility to respond the right way to situations, as someone in the public eye, at the same time, she tries to concentrate on walking “in my lane, in my path,” and not pay too much attention to what she calls outside noise.
By that, she means “the opinions of people who have no idea who I am. If you do that, you will lose yourself and drown in the opinion of someone who, I don’t want to say doesn’t matter, but doesn’t really have an effect on your life. I like to surround myself with people that I trust—family and friends. I like to seek advice from people that I admire. And that’s the way that I move. I have to be able to look myself in the mirror.”
Voting your voice
Given the attention Higher Learning gives to political issues, Lindsay is concerned by the apathy she sees among young Blacks when it comes to voting. It blows her mind: “I just really don’t understand it. One, just the history of voting for us in this country—you should just want to vote because people [gave] blood, sweat and tears for you to get to this point.”
“You have to continue to fight for the things that you want.”
Secondly, there are so many crucial issues at stake. “Why would you not want to lend your vote, which is your voice, towards combating that or fighting for that?” The country is doing a 180-degree turn in some areas, she believes—women’s rights, voting rights as examples. “We’re not being progressive; we’re going backwards and we’re continuing to go backwards.”
Young Black voters need to remember that change takes time. “The civil rights movement didn’t happen overnight,” she notes. “It didn’t happen under one presidential election. You have to be patient. You have to stay the course. A lot of times people say, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t like how I felt under this president, so I’m not going to vote for him again.’ It takes time. You have to continue to fight for the things that you want.” And, at the end of the day, “if you don’t vote, you really can’t say anything. There’s no power in not voting.”
Grateful for the help she has received along the way, especially from those who spotted something in her she did not see, Lindsay is part of a mentoring program at her alma mater, Marquette, where she was one of only nine Black students in a class of 300. “I’ll never forget what that feeling was like,” she says. Black alums helped her with job hunting and advice, “so make sure I do that . . . I try to mentor them and give them things I didn’t get when I was in law school.”
Rachel Lindsay by Rachel Lindsay
What three words would she use to describe herself?
“Resilient—something I have never used before. I’m learning that about myself as I’m going through this stage in my life. Dynamic, because I feel like I’m always moving and changing, but for the better. The third word, I would say understanding, yeah.”
Another mentoring opportunity has presented itself through personal difficulty—her divorce from Abasolo, announced earlier this year. “I really feel like the way my divorce is rolling out I’m meant to help, to do something that helps women navigate this because it is unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced,” she says. Going through such a “rollercoaster” experience in the public eye isn’t easy. When people first got to know her as The Bachelorette, she was “in a space of looking for love and now I’m back out here. It’s very weird.”
Lindsay has heard both from women going through their own breakups and others offering advice having come through the other side who “are giving me such beautiful advice and are truly breathing life into me. And so, I feel it’s my duty and my responsibility in some way to return the favor and help other women.”
Acknowledging her past tendency to be a bit of a people pleaser (“I’m a middle child”), Lindsay says she would tell her younger self not to be so afraid. “I really let fear hold me back from certain things that I wanted to do or certain desires that I had,” she reflects.
“If you’re not scared of it, it’s almost not worth it.”
At age 21, “Rachel was having a good old time,” she says. “She lived by the motto of I did what I was supposed to so then I could do what I’m not supposed to at the same time . . . I was still very caught up in the opinion that people had of me and in pleasing people, and that’s a gift and a curse.”
With what she has learned since, she would advise younger Rachel that “it is okay to make mistakes along the way. It is okay to be fearful but lean into that. If you’re not scared of it, it’s almost not worth it; doing that makes the journey even better . . . chill out, let go, and just follow your heart’s desires. And at the end of the day, you’re going to be okay.”
RACHEL LINDSAY: MY WAYMAKERS
I would start off with my parents, both first-generation college students, for different reasons. I saw my dad [federal judge Sam A. Lindsay] go through being a lot of firsts professionally and I just admired him. He was my waymaker in regards to really shaping and showing me what hard work is, fighting the outside noise, trusting in your own skills and beliefs and knowing you deserve to have a seat at the table. I get my inner strength, my character from my mom—the sacrifices that she’s made, but also being her own woman at the same time. I feel like I’m a beautiful blend of both [of them] and that’s helped me become the woman that I am and given me a lot of wisdom and understanding and a really great foundation.
There have also been teachers along the way that have really impacted me. My 11th-grade teacher, Mrs. Hewlett, really shaped my thinking. She gave me a lot of self-awareness and helped me think outside of the box and look outside of my bubble. I went to a small religious private school where everybody thought the same, and she opened my mind up to so much more.
From an interview with Louis Carr
