The Bachelor: Grant Ellis Named as the Next Leading Man for Season 29

The day trader appeared on Jenn Tran's season of 'The Bachelorette'

Grant Ellis
Bachelor Grant Ellis. Photo:

Disney/Ricky Middlesworth

Jenn Tran’s season of The Bachelorette hasn’t wrapped yet, but Bachelor Nation already has a new love story to look forward to watching.

ABC announced on Monday, Aug. 12, that Grant Ellis, who appeared on 26-year-old Tran's season, will step in as the lead of The Bachelor season 29.

Ellis, 30, will be taking the reigns from the latest Bachelor, Joey Graziadei, who ended his season engaged to Kelsey Anderson. The day trader marks the franchise's second Black Bachelor, with Matt James being the first.

The news comes after Tran, 26, eliminated Ellis, Spencer Conley and Sam McKinnley on the Aug. 12 episode of The Bachelorette.

Tran said “goodbye” to Ellis after he told her he was falling in love with her. “I poured everything out and it wasn't good enough,” he told the cameras. “It just sucks knowing that you feel some way about somebody, and they don’t feel the same about you.”

Jenn Tran and Grant on "The Bachelorette."
Jenn Tran and Grant Ellis on 'The Bachelorette' season 21.

John Fleenor/Disney

Just like Tran, Ellis narrowly missed out on heading to Hometowns,

"I want a family, you know?" he said on the Aug. 12 episode of The Bachelorette. "I want to be happy. I want a wife. I want to be in love. I want that, you know? I want to give everything to somebody, and I want them to give everything to me in return. I don't know what else to say. I did not think that was going to happen tonight."

Conley, 30, took the departure hard, too.

“Jenn’s the first person I’ve met since my last breakup where I’ve seen the path towards an engagement and losing that stings,” he said. “It’s just every time, it just doesn’t work out. I don’t know what to do.”

The pet portrait entrepreneur called his mom in tears. “I just want my person,” Conley said over the phone.

Tran sent McKinney, 27, home because she felt like she and her first impression rose recipient couldn’t get beyond a physical connection. When McKinney tried to prove to Tran that they connected on an emotional level, he told her he loved her.

“I can’t do this,” Tran said. “I can’t sit here with someone who says that they love me but doesn’t even really want to get to know me and understand me and see me.”

Tran exited McKinney ahead of the rose ceremony and said in an on-camera interview that she misjudged him.

“I really pride myself on reading people well and being intuitive and I am so mad that I got it wrong,” Tran explained. “It was a relationship in which it was mainly physical. He didn’t really try to get to know me.”  

Jenn Tran's jet-setting journey to find love begins as 25 men arrive ready to make a lasting impression. Setting the stage for a history-making season, night one will unfold at a new mansion before Jenn and her men head to exotic locales.
Jenn Tran and suitor Sam McKinney on 'The Bachelorette' season 21.

John Fleenor/Disney

McKinney’s family has stated online that the contractor received a bad edit on the show, but Tran refuted that claim.

“Listen, nobody can put words in your mouth,” Tran said on the Love to See It podcast earlier this month. “As much as a TV edit is [an edit], no one can give you a villain edit in some way, which is what people are claiming. You have to own your words because no one’s putting words in your mouth. You are the person that is saying those things.”      

Ultimately, Jenn brought Devin Strader, Jeremy Simon, Jonathan Johnson and Marcus Shoberg to Hometowns.

Viewers will not only have to wait until Tran’s season wraps before seeing if Ellis finds love as The Bachelor, but Joan Vassos’s season of The Golden Bachelorette will air this fall ahead of Ellis's season.

Vassos, 61, marks the franchise’s first Golden Bachelorette, stepping into the role after looking for love on Gerry Turner’s inaugural Golden Bachelor season. The school administrator dropped out of the race for 73-year-old Turner’s heart in week 3 to be with her daughter after she gave birth.

“It's a privilege to be a mom to four amazing kids and a grandmother (they call me Jojo) to two beautiful grandchildren. But once a mom, always a mom and sometimes the timing doesn't work out with finding love,” the reality star wrote on her Instagram Story in October. "Everyone at home is doing great and I hope one day I will get the chance at love again."

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The Golden Bachelorette premieres Wednesday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

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