‘The Vow’s Chris Harrison Talks About Returning To The Dating Scene

Chris Harrison, who spent nearly 20 years working on The Bachelor, is back in the dating pool with new reality series The Vow.

But Harrison, who left the ABC franchise in somewhat unceremonious fashion five years ago, has vowed to do things differently with the Fox Nation show, which was first revealed by Deadline earlier this year.

Firstly, he’s done with eliminations, but he’s also found faith and is now working with his wife, Lauren Zima, a former senior producer and host of Entertainment Tonight, who covered The Bachelor for years through the Roses and Rosé recap show.

After he left The Bachelor franchise, Harrison was regularly pitched other dating formats, but he felt they were “gimmicky”.

“Right when I left, we were being pitched ideas that felt gimmicky that didn’t have the depth, and I [wanted] to wait until we found something that had soul, that we could really lean into and that’s what The Vow became. It was hopefully the most authentic, intentional dating show ever. Anything short of that was didn’t seem like was worthy of our time and effort,” Harrison told Deadline. “If it never felt right again, then we never would have done a show. But all of a sudden, I think more than ever, there is a need and a want for love, and a need and a want for a great love story to be told, so the timing was perfect to create The Vow.”

Zima added that Harrison had made people feel connected to him throughout his career and they wanted to replicate that. “If he was going to come back with anything, it needed to be something that was deeply authentic and that was about the pursuit of a real soulmate type of love, which means a lot to both of us. I think we both think of each other as our soulmates, and we wanted to work on something that felt meaningful. Our business is hard, and you give it your all, and so it really helps when it feels like it’s coming from a deep, true place,” she told Deadline.

The pair worked with Lionsgate Alternative Television on the project before selling it to Fox Nation.

One of the main format points of The Vow, which stars 30-year-old Jace Cates as its first bachelor alongside ten single women, was the fact that there were no eliminations.

Harrison said that elimination ceremonies and dates to Bora Bora didn’t feel “real” or “authentic”.

“It was the removal of a lot of things that was scary as a producer because you lean on those things to create moments, create drama, to get you in and out of ad breaks, get you in and out of episodes, to create cliffhangers etc. To pull away from that is actually a very scary process, and you really have to trust what you’re doing is going to deliver, and when you do something for the first time, there is a bit of unknown. There’s a bit of hope, and you trust your instincts. You got to trust what you’re doing, but you hope it’s there at the end of the day,” he added.

Zima said that they didn’t have a “roadmap” for such a process, but wanted to be more agile in filming those real-life moments.

“Audiences today are really smart. We live in a world where so much of that fourth wall has been broken and the curtain has been pulled back, and so we certainly wanted it to be as authentic as possible, and that means they’ve seen these contrived ceremonies for many years. I think it’s meaningful to see it’s all stripped away now,” she added.

The pair weren’t even sure if Cates would eliminate any of the women in the first episode, which premiered today (November 11).

“We kind of assumed he wouldn’t send anybody home. We would have been fine with that. We’re just getting to know everybody, and right away he just wasn’t feeling it with one woman, and he wanted to set the tone, that was 100% on him,” said Harrison. “All of us in the control room, that’s kind of the moment we were like, okay, this is the ride we’re on. This is going to be wild. The unpredictability, and not knowing what’s coming next, is going to be the drama.”

Having worked on The Bachelor franchise for so long, Harrison also had to unlearn some of the tropes that made that show work. He was also surrounded by people who had also worked on The Bachelor. These included Louis Caric and Elan Gale who both worked on the Warner Bros. TV-produced ABC franchise for around ten years, as well as director Michael Shea and casting director Lindsay Liles.

Talking of The Bachelor, Harrison and the team received a cease-and-desist notice from Warner Bros., which produces the ABC show through its Warner Horizon arm, that claimed images of red rose petals, a mansion and the use of the words ‘The Bachelor’ followed by a man in a tux in the trailer impinged its IP. Fox’s counsel hit back and said that WB attorneys “wrongly assume that Warner Bros. holds any intellectual property rights whatsoever in a falling roses motif or in the words ‘The Bachelor’ when used colloquially to describe a single man.”

Harrison believes that his former employers were making it “personal”.

“You can’t put a cease and desist on love,” he said. “I’ve been away for five years. There have been dozens of other dating shows. They’ve come after one very publicly. Is it a coincidence? I don’t think so. On the flip side, there are many friends of ours on that show still, people I care about and this business is hard. I don’t wish anybody to lose their jobs. There’s enough room for everybody to be successful.”

Harrison admitted that he always watches the ratings of The Bachelor, which is gearing up for season 30 in March 2027, having been off the air since January 2025.

What followed that was The Bachelorette initially skipping a cycle, followed by the departure of its showrunners Claire Freeland and Bennett Graebner, who had been promoted in the wake of the departure of creator Mike Fleiss following a misconduct investigation, before season 22 of The Bachelorette was pulled after The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Taylor Frankie Paul became embroiled in a domestic assault investigation.

Harrison has joked that you don’t mind if you ex gains weight, but what you don’t want to see is the “revenge bod”.

“I wish them well. I hope they clean up their mess and get back on track. I think it does all of us good. I think a rising tide lifts all boats, and so there was the side of me that felt, yeah, you guys are making it personal, but no ill will here. I take it as flattery. I mean, I think they see something coming down the tracks, and it’s a train,” he added.

The Vow was also the first show that Zima has exec produced. “I’m grateful for my journalism background and how much storytelling matters in that field and how it applies here,” she said. “I was honored to be on that set all day, every day. I wanted to soak up and learn as much as I could to know what I didn’t know.”

Harrison added, “Having an experienced, brilliant journalist in the room, she’s so adept at pulling on a thread and extrapolating what that thread is going to lead to, and telling that story, and seeing that journalism brain go into reality TV was brilliant.”

The pair were buoyed by the casting process and believe there are plenty more fish in the sea if the show is successful and renewed.

“I think we have kicked over the proverbial ant hill, and we are hearing from so many women,” Harrison said. “These aren’t Instagram famous people. They don’t have a million followers. They’re just diamonds in the rough. These are people who truly want this life. In the blessing of seasons two through ten, I think we can find many more. By the way, if we can’t, we won’t do a season.”

Harrison called the whole process “refreshing”. “I just think you’re going to see and hear conversations you’ve never seen on reality TV before,” he said. “I think people are really going to like this and feel like this is oddly something new.”