If everything had gone according to plan for Disney in the spring 2026 TV schedule, then Bachelor Nation fans would already be a week into Taylor Frankie Paul’s season of The Bachelorette on ABC and eagerly waiting for more from the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star. Everything definitely hasn’t gone according to plan, however, with ABC pulling Season 22 from primetime and allegedly losing a lot of money because of it. Now, a Disney fan on social media pointed out an interesting coincidence that puts a new spin on the situation from a corporate perspective.
The situation started last week, when a video went viral of Taylor Frankie Paul in a domestic altercation while a child was in the room. ABC wasted no time in pulling The Bachelorette from the schedule, just days before Season 22 had been set to premiere on the network and stream via a Hulu subscription. While ABC reportedly left the door open to bring the season back rather than cancelling it entirely, even former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay was wondering how the franchise could “move forward” past what happened.
That may be a problem for new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro to deal with, as one user on X (formerly known as Twitter) pointed out:
Bob Iger left being CEO at The Walt Disney Company just in time to make Bob Chapek deal with the fallout from COVID and just in time to make D’Amaro deal with the fallout from Taylor Frankie Paul.
Oddly enough, while I certainly doubt there are any nefarious forces at work, the timeline does work out that Iger’s tenures as Disney boss do neatly avoid some major complications in the entertainment industry. The longtime CEO left the company in 2020 after his contract expired, with Bob Chapek named as his successor effective immediately in late February 2020, a.k.a. just weeks before the industry-wide production shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bob Chapek only lasted from 2020-2022, at which point he was removed by the Disney board and replaced by Bob Iger, who stayed for another four years through to March 2026. Then, as we learned during Disney’s 2026 shareholders meeting, Iger stepped down again to be replaced by Josh D’Amaro on March 18. The date that the whole Bachelorette controversy broke and required ABC and Disney to act ASAP? March 19.
Somehow, Bob Iger has managed to bow out of the job of Disney CEO just before major events that require swift action, and I can’t help but wonder how Bob Chapek and Josh D’Amaro reacted when they saw how quickly they’d be dealing with some crises. Chapek at least got a couple of weeks before it became clear that COVID would require industry-wide shutdowns; D’Amaro got a day before Taylor Frankie Paul’s video went viral, although he had been named as Iger’s successor before stepping into the CEO role on March 18.
Of course, the Disney CEO job does encompass much more than The Bachelorette for Josh D’Amaro, and he was quick to name something that Disney has but other movie studios don’t. There are also the parks to consider, not too long after former CEO Michael Eisner openly acknowledged that Disneyland and Disney World are too expensive. Plus, even if we’re only accounting for ABC among Disney’s TV platforms, there are renewals and cancellations to consider this spring.
For now, Bachelor Nation fans can only wait and see if Taylor Frankie Paul’s season will ever see the light of day in any form, or if the franchise will be off the air until a new season of The Bachelor and/or Bachelor in Paradise can be produced.
