While a couple of Bachelor in Paradise contestants have spoken out about what they did and did not witness on the set prior to production being shut down, it looks like others are keeping mum.
Robby Hayes announced that he has no comment in perhaps the most tasteless way imaginable, and he’s getting major backlash for it online.
“What happens in paradise, stays in paradise,” he tweeted, adding the hashtags “NoCommenta” and “BIP4.”
Dude … given speculation about what happened, that reads like a borderline rape joke. Not cool.
It would be a fine response if people were asking who drank the most or whether there was an orgy or about basically anything else but what sounds like a sexual assault.
But because people are very much talking about sexual assault, there is no excuse for appropriating the Vegas slogan for this.
Maybe he’s just thinking of this as a scenario of cheating — Corinne does have a real life boyfriend now, after all — and not wanting to tattle.
But nobody shuts down production because somebody stepped out on their significant other, or we wouldn’t have reality television at all.
And heck, if Robby was there, maybe from what he saw things didn’t look that serious.
But Robby should know that people are talking about consent and sexual assault, and he shouldn’t have such a lighthearted tone about it.
Especially if he isn’t going to “clear things up” or whatever.
Have some class, dude.
There’s only so much that we know so far, but allegedly Corinne Olympios and DeMario Jackson began hooking up in a pool after spending all day drinking.
There was reportedly a lot of touching and even some fingering, with DeMario engaging in some genital-licking.
And according to (mixed) reports, it’s been sounding like they were encouraged, possibly every step of the way, by producers.
What raises the most red flags is that, while DeMario remembers the encounter, Corinne does not.
And while sometimes that sort of thing just happens, we can’t imagine a network pulling the plug on an entire season so suddenly — and expensively — unless they worry that something truly awful has happened.
So far, no one is seriously accusing DeMario or Corinne of any wrongdoing.
And that includes Corinne not blaming DeMario — they were both super intoxicated.
It’s been sounding like, at the bare minimum, the producers and crew should have intervened and ushered them back to their respective rooms.
Honestly, even if they’d been sober, there’s so much of even a blurred sexual encounter that they could have gotten away with airing.
But when intoxication is a factor, consent is not, and any responsible bystander should have separated the two until they slept it off.
Some of the contestants, Robby included, must feel frustrated over being sent home. Some might even blame their pool-partying costars.
But there have been suggestions that the producers wanted something like this to happen, believing that the hookup would lead to higher ratings.
Corinne Olympios’ wild reputation would make her the perfect character for them to steer into thotting it up in the pool, right?
If that’s really what happened, then not only is it shameful — we’d say that getting two people drunk so that they’ll bang on camera is every bit as vile as getting them drunk so that they’ll bang you — but it backfired spectacularly.
Because it sounds like there’s basically zero chance of this season of Bachelor in Paradise happening.
As for what happened … we may not ever know the whole story, but for any investigators involved, we’re sure that the cameras caught plenty of evidence.
Honestly, we’d love to find out that this is just a minor sex scandal with no foul play and maybe just a producer who misunderstood the situation and freaked out a little.
And if that’s the case, Robby Hayes’ tweet would almost be justified.
But it would still be a tone-deaf response, given that fans have heard that the situation is worse than that.
Robby needs to get his act together and be less flippant if he wants fans to put up with him enough to continue his reality career.
