Reality Check: Susan Lucci declines 'Golden Bachelorette' offer

Garden City’s Susan Lucci, who was married to her husband, Helmut Huber, for 52 years until his death in 2022 at age 84, says she was approached by the producers of ABC’s “The Golden Bachelorette” about being the inaugural star of that upcoming new seniors-oriented dating competition.

“I believe that they contacted my publicist and it wasn't for me," the recent Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award winner, 77, told People magazine, while conceding, “I watched ‘The Golden Bachelor.’ I really enjoyed watching ‘The Golden Bachelor.’ This is a new addiction for me."

Lucci said she began watching the flagship show in the ABC franchise, “The Bachelor,” after seeing how much her personal assistant enjoyed the series. “My assistant told me she was going home to watch ‘The Bachelor’ with her daughters. She said, ‘Well, it's really good.’ I watched it. The first time I watched it was that night a couple seasons ago. I was immediately engaged. I cared. I wanted to know more about these people.”

But while calling Bachelor Nation shows “my new guilty pleasure,” Lucci said of “The Golden Bachelorette,” “I didn't pursue [it] when they called my publicist to see if I would be interested.”

She added, “It wasn't for me, but I do love watching.”

ABC announced on May 14 that Rockland, Maryland, private-school administrator Joan Vassos, 61, will be the first star of “The Golden Bachelorette,” scheduled to premiere this fall.

Premieres

In another spinoff of the franchise, Lifetime on Monday at 9 p.m. debuts the new hourlong series “Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up,” following the post-incarceration progress of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who was paroled in December after serving nearly 9 years of a 10-year sentence for second-degree murder. Her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, is serving a life sentence for the first-degree murder of Blanchard’s abusive mother, Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard, and Gypsy Rose Blanchard while behind bars married someone else … Opposite on Bravo, with a 75-minute premiere, Captain Sandy Yawn and her crew return to the Italian Riviera and the coast of Greece for a ninth season of charter yachting on “Below Deck Mediterranean” … And opposite on HGTV to 11:01 p.m., on the season 4 premiere of “Battle on the Beach,” new teams compete to renovate beachfront properties under the eyes of mentors Taniya Nayak, Ty Pennington and Alison Victoria … Wednesday from 9 to 10:01 p.m., HGTV superstars Drew and Jonathan Scott head up yet another series, “Backed by the Bros,” focusing not on their renovation and contracting but instead on their advice to real estate investors, from full-out developers to intrepid entrepreneurs … and early Thursday on the streaming service Netflix, the sophomore season of “Perfect Match” finds 22 new singles from across Netflix’s unscripted series attempting to couple up and test romantic relationships through compatibility challenges that can give them power to bring in new singles in order to, best I can figure, just stir things up.

Recaps

The season 19 premiere of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” found host Terry Crews giving comedian Learnmore Jonasi a Golden Buzzer to the live shows, Heidi Klum did likewise for singing janitor Richard Goodall, and Elmont math prodigy Devan Defreitas, 2, got four "yes" votes for his audition … Laura Ozyilmaz came back from Last Chance Kitchen and Michelle Wallace had to pack up her knives and go on “Top Chef” … and Glen Cove’s German Rizzo remains on “Summer Baking Championship,” as Nayibe Renaud fell flat, while Montauk’s Hanna Haar is still cooking on “Ciao House” after Maria Bregatta and Jan Parker had to say, “Arrivederci!”