Reality Steve Answers Your Burning Questions

Back when Steve Carbone aka Reality Steve started blogging about The Bachelor in 2004, social media didn’t really exist — much less today’s intricate and inescapable web of content creators powered by reality TV speculation. It was just him and the Wild West of the open internet. “Nobody else was sitting there writing four- or five-page recaps of a reality show,” he says. Then came 2009’s Jason Mesnick-fronted season of The Bachelor, when Carbone changed the reality TV game by spoiling the season’s final twist — and cementing himself as Bachelor Nation’s unofficial town crier.

Though he’s since traded his keyboard for the podcasting mic (which he calls “working smarter, not harder”), Carbone, 51, is still considered a big fish in the Bachelor Nation Spoilerverse, even occasionally stepping outside the confines of the mansion to cover other reality shows, too. And he’s no shrinking violet: “I’m the only person on the internet that I know of that has consistently spoiled a major network reality TV show season after season after season,” he says. “Nobody’s done it for any other show. Nobody’s done it for The Bachelor other than me. I think that’s kind of cool.”

We asked the pioneering newsbreaker-opinionator for his take on the state of the reality TV union, what we should expect out of a post-Taylor Frankie Paul Bachelor Nation, and whether — all these years later — he’d pleeeease spill a little tea on the identity of the Mesnick mole.

I’m not expecting you to name names necessarily, but are there certain people you hear from all the time?

Not in regards to spoilers. There are people that I’ve just become acquaintances with where we just keep up and talk about the show because they’re a fan. They’ll come to me and just be like, “Hey, what’d you hear? Have you heard anything?” Especially when the Taylor Frankie Paul stuff came down. Now, would they invite me to their wedding? No. Would I invite them to mine? No. But we like to talk reality TV. They know instead of having to search all over Instagram or TikTok, they’ll just text me and just be like, “What have you heard?”

For your purpose, who has been the best-ever contestant?

I guess I’ll go back to Jason Mesnick because that’s what put me on the map, the Jason Masnick spoiler [in 2009]. And at that time, it was just such a big deal. We had never seen that — where the guy chose the final girl and then he dumps her and asks the girl that he’d previously dumped to just start dating — and they filmed it on an empty studio set with no live audience two months before the finale aired. Nobody had any reason to believe that that spoiler was right because they had never seen anything like that. And once that spoiler ended up being right, it was just like, “Oh wow, so this guy does have some sort of inside information on this show.”

Now that so much time has passed, can you reveal anything about how you got that spoiler scoop?

I will say this: I don’t think if I hadn’t lived in Dallas, I would’ve gotten that spoiler. If I was still living in Southern California, that spoiler doesn’t come to me. If you look at who the final person was that season, maybe put two and two together: It came from that camp. Somebody that knew something around this secret taping didn’t directly tell me, but I was indirectly told because of that whole Dallas infrastructure involved with one of the people.

Obviously you’re Bachelor Nation royalty, but now that there are so many shows, what do you feel like you have to watch? Is there anything you’d rather not watch but need to for your job?

Love Is Blind is kind of a slog, but there’s usually really good tea every season. The pod episodes get long. I find the concept utterly ridiculous, but it does bring good drama, and it does bring in a lot of people who love talking about that show.

And then The Valley — it’s kind of fallen off in Season 3 this year. Nobody seems to care about it, and I can see why. We’re seven episodes in, and literally nothing has happened — compared to the Summer House scandal going on between West and Amanda and Ciara and Kyle. And I’ve realized that, honestly, unless there’s infidelity involved or some people hooking up — unless you have that sort of scandal — nobody talks about your show. Scandals are what get people talking. Obviously Scandoval was a huge thing because a guy who had a nine-year girlfriend was cheating on her behind her back, and the West and Amanda thing has taken off, so everybody is focused on the Summer House reunion. And then I watched The Valley and I’m like, “They’re upset because somebody said something mean. Really?”

So post-Scandoval, the expectations are different?

Yeah. It’s almost like you have to have a giant scandal. Look, I can’t watch every show, but outside of, say, felony behavior — as Taylor Frankie Paul exhibited, which is obviously a huge deal in Bachelor Nation right now — it’s usually sex-related and hooking up and infidelity-related, cheating-related. And then social media brings out these people running to show receipts with text messages. It just wasn’t like that back then.

Is it more fun for you now that there’s a full reality ecosystem online?

I mean, it’s engaging for the audience. They absolutely eat it up, and they love it. For me, it’s great content when there is a back-and-forth out there, when somebody’s releasing texts and saying, like, “Well, no, this is a lie. This is what you said to me.” Even on something that’s not even reality-show-related but is podcast-related: The Alex Cooper and Alix Earle feud has kind of died down, but Alix Earle eventually is going to say something when her TV show starts. It’s all about showing receipts. It’s great content.

Where does Taylor Frankie Paul go from here? Where does ABC go from here? What's going to happen, Steve?!

I keep hearing that it is going to air. I don’t know when because ABC has announced their summer schedule and their fall schedule, and it’s not on the schedule. But I am hearing it is going to air at some point. And when they did announce their fall schedule, ABC didn’t say, like, “We made the decision not to air.” They keep saying, “We’re looking at it day by day.” If they were not going to air the show, they would just say, “We’re not airing it. We’re done.” What two months later do you need to figure out that you haven’t figured out by now? Nothing. They’re just waiting for time to pass. But I’ve been told it is going to air, and it will air in 2026 because The Bachelor’s coming back in 2027. Why would you air the next Bachelor season and then be like, “Here’s Taylor Frankie Paul’s season, almost 18 months after we filmed it”?

Was it a mistake that they canned it for at least a while this spring?

No, I think they needed to in the moment. You had to. That video was so disgusting to watch. And so that was too fresh in people’s minds. I understand why they did it, but as I said when I went live on my YouTube literally an hour after they announced it, the wording they used was “We’re pausing.” Everybody thought at that time that the season was canceled. I said, “Why wouldn’t they just say canceled?” They were buying time. If they air this thing and drop it on a streamer in August, people will watch. But it won’t have the same buzz as a normal Bachelor or Bachelorette if it goes on a streamer because everybody’s going to watch it on their own, unless they drop one episode a week.

Do you have a relationship with the ABC executives?

Oh God, no, they hate me. They’re not fans of me.

I thought they might’ve come around. Kind of like the way that Anna Wintour now stands with The Devil Wears Prada.

I’ve asked former contestants what production has said about me in the past, and they basically just say that — publicly — they’ll never acknowledge. Privately, I don’t think they care. The one thing I think they do care about is the ending spoiler — that I’m ruining the ending of who chooses who. But do I honestly think they care that I released who got eliminated in episode 3? No, they don’t.

To you, it’s fan service, right?

Yeah, and it’s free advertising for them. But they can’t acknowledge it. They’ll never even call me out negatively because then that’s just drawing attention to me.

How do you feel personally about Taylor Frankie Paul? I saw on your Instagram that you were giving her advice: “Get off social media.” What are your thoughts about her as a Secret Lives character and the crossover to Bachelorette?

I just thought she had too much baggage. I understood it for the 3 million followers on Instagram, the 6 million followers on TikTok. I got it. We’ve never had a lead with that many followers; she blows everybody out of the water. So she was probably going to get some of the best ratings we've ever seen in recent years. Still, I just didn’t think her as the choice made a lot of sense.

If they would’ve said, “We’re announcing our new Bachelor as just some random guy. He’s 35 years old. He’s the CEO of a finance company, very successful, but he just hasn’t found the love of his life.” And a quick Google search said that he chucked three barstools at his girlfriend three years ago, there would’ve been pitchforks lined up outside of ABC saying, “What the hell are you doing making this guy the Bachelor?” And there wasn’t that type of pushback for Taylor. There was from the old-school Bachelor fan base, but everybody who loves Taylor Frankie Paul just said, “She’s learned, she’s grown, she’s gone through therapy. Doesn’t everybody get second chances?” Taylor Frankie Paul deserves to find love — she just shouldn’t have been given this platform to find it.

Do you think the double standard is really about gender, or is it more about celebrity? People feel like they know her so they feel like they could defend her.

I don’t understand the staunch defense. You can like Taylor Frankie Paul, but I’ve noticed ever since covering her that it’s one thing to defend her, but it’s another thing to not be objective about her — because they are basically saying it’s over and done with, she’s taken accountability, she’s gone to therapy. I’m like, What am I missing? Leading up to her leaving for filming The Bachelorette, she clearly wasn’t over Dakota, and it showed on that season [of Secret Lives]. She clearly wasn’t interested in [finding love]. It was a paycheck for her. It was, “Yeah, I’ll play this role for two months.”

Do you think producers are on the phone all day trying to get other influencers and celebrities for the franchise, and she’s just the one who would actually do it?

I heard that Taylor was a last-second decision. Going through casting, they had men lined up because it was supposed to be a Bachelor season. The Bachelor is what airs in the New Year, and they changed it up to Taylor Frankie Paul. Maybe they saw the success of Whitney Leavitt and the other one that was on Dancing With the Stars last year [Jen Affleck]. Like, “Oh sh*t, maybe we cast one of these Secret Lives women under the Disney corporate umbrella. Steal one of them from a Hulu show, make them our lead.” Stunt casting is what it was.

For years, people have been saying that Bachelor Nation needs a shot in the arm. The Taylor Frankie Paul thing didn’t work out. So what would you do to reinvigorate the franchise?

This next Bachelor choice is probably the most important casting choice that this franchise is ever going to make. It’s going to make or break the franchise, and I just don’t see them being like, “Hey, here’s John Smith that nobody knows.” So I do think they’re probably going to go with a guy from another reality show, or a D-list celebrity. If it’s an athlete, it would have to be a former athlete because every major athlete that’s currently playing can’t film September to November — they’re in season.

OK, if you were going to do Bachelor Nation hall of fame — the five best stars ever, in your opinion — who would they be?

Like a Mount Rushmore plus one? Kaitlyn Bristowe. God, as much as I don’t want to say this name: Nick Viall. I think you got to put Trista [Sutter] on there because she’s the pioneer. The first Bachelorette, still married to her husband to this day, has a beautiful family. She is the OG. Hannah Brown, I guess, would be four.

Any other men?

What other men have made a giant impact on this franchise?

Tyler Cameron.

Yeah, I guess you could put him in there. If I’m not mistaken, he has the most followers of any male that’s ever been in Bachelor Nation. He’s got the most attention for a guy that literally was on one show. He was on Hannah Brown’s season, never did anything else with the show again.

Guess he had something figured out.