B.J. Britt with Meagan Tandy in “UnREAL”; Bettina Strauss/Lifetime(NEW YORK) — Ten years after rapper Flavor Flav proclaimed he was “The Blackchelor” on VH1’s Flavor of Love, there still hasn’t been a black suitor on ABC’s wildly popular reality series, The Bachelor.
But Lifetime has answered the call, with their first black bachelor featured on the scripted dramedy UnREAL, which chronicles the inside world of a dating reality show.
B.J. Britt, who gained popularity on BET’s Being Mary Jane, said there are pros and cons that come with the opportunity.
“It’s just awesome to play the first black bachelor, let alone the first black anything,” he tells ABC Radio. “But just like with being the first of anything there’s a lot of pressure just to make sure you get it right and you tell the story the way that you want it to come off and for it to be perceived well.”
Britt said he’d never heard of UnREAL when he was approached about the part. “And so they said, ‘Look, we want you to take a look at this’ and I said, okay, ‘cool, cool.’ So I was just going to look at the first two episodes to get a feel of what it was and literally binge-watched the thing all the way through. I mean, it’s a great fricking show. It’s breaking down barriers, as you can see.”
UnREAL‘s producers wanted to push the envelope in the show’s second season, and sought Britt’s input.
“They said, ‘Listen, we don’t know that we’re going to get it right, that’s why we want to make sure you give us your input as well’…. And it made me that much more comfortable being able to do a role like this,” says Britt.
UnREAL airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
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