Who Is Jade Gilliland, the 'Bachelor' Star Vying for Peter's Heart?

Spoilers for The Bachelor ahead. Well, that was fast. Peter Weber's Bachelor season had not even started filming yet, and drama already came for one of the contestants: Jade Gilliland, the flight attendant who (spoiler alert) used to be married and immediately started getting flack for it when she was announced as a contestant. It's gotten so bad, her ex has already had to make a statement—which may either be really bad for her chances with Peter or make for an intriguing, multilayered character. Contestants have been divorced in the past—Tayshia Adams, for example, who is beloved by fans—so it's far from a deal-breaker. With that in mind, let's investigate what we know so far.

She's a flight attendant.

Based on the bare bones info (opens in new tab) we have so far, Jade is 26, from Mesa, Arizona, and a flight attendant for Allegiant Airlines. That makes sense—she's one of two attendants, and one of Peter's women is apparently a pilot. I'm sensing a theme from this season.

Jade's sister-in-law has been calling her out.

Apparently until last year, Jade was married (her maiden name is Gilliland, married name McCrary). Things got very real, very fast. The full post is below, but the gist is that Jade's ex-sister-in-law found out about Jade's presence on the show and...had some thoughts, let me put it that way. There are allegations about her failure as an influencer, how she broke up with her ex, and her behavior even when they were married:

This is, like, the most extreme version of "not there for the right reasons" that I've seen in a while. Again the fact that contestants have social media before the show, and thus verifiable pasts that don't go away even after they scrub them, has kind of been a problem.

And her ex-husband responded.

In contrast to the vitriol of his sister, Mike McCrary merely said that the relationship was "broken" and that he wasn't interested in the negativity back and forth. He didn't offer specifics, but said that he was in a good place and thankful to Jade for that. Here's the full statement:

Which I think bodes well for Jade—there are potentially as many as three contestants who may be cut from the show before it even airs, and producers are generally looking for drama, but not too much. This might have tipped into too much drama, but with this note from Jade's husband, it may be deemed juuuust dramatic enough (especially because Peter himself is not particularly all that interesting, #sorrynotsorry). We also may see Jade for the first episode and then see her get cut immediately, but either way—we'll update when we know more.

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