Reactions to Clayton Shade on Bachelorette Premiere: Susie, More

Big yikes! Bachelor Nation stars, including Susie Evans and Katie Thurston, reacted to all the shade Bachelor alum Clayton Echard received during the premiere of Bachelorette stars Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia’s season on Monday, July 11.

During the season 19 premiere, many of the contestants referenced Gabby, 31, and Rachel’s bumpy relationship with the former football player, 29, with one limo entrance including a choir that repeated sang, “Clayton sucks.” However, the former leading man from season 26 is simply trying to laugh off the “slander.”

“As I saw the episode, I was very happy to just feel that I’m like, you know, ‘It’s not personal, it’s business,’” Clayton said during Kaitlyn Bristowe’s “Off the Vine” podcast on Tuesday, July 12, citing Matthew McConaughey’s book, Greenlights.

All in all, the Missouri native is “happy” where life has taken him since opting to end things with Gabby and Rachel, 26, in order to pursue a relationship with his girlfriend, Susie, 28.

“I’m pushing the things I want to push on. I’m chasing my true purpose and passion in life, finally, for the first time,” he explained. “I think through all the muck and everything that I went through, here I am because of this entire environment … I saw the show, the episode and all of the attacks and the song, the choir … honestly, [I] didn’t really get a reaction other than I just kind of laughed.”

Clayton even joked he was going to “go chase down those parents” of the choir singers. While he tried to “find light in it,” he did acknowledge that the episode went a bit hard on him.

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“Do I think that it’s what should have been shown? I mean, no. I do think it was cyberbullying or an attack or it’s going to lead to cyberbullying,” Clayton continued. “And so for that, I’m not the biggest fan of how that was shown, but it was and like you said, it’s just the nature of the beast.”

The former salesman promised he wasn’t going to “lose sleep over” the shady insults. “If I start giving more power to people that have no interest in my passions and they’re gonna try to just pull me off this path that I’m now on and I’m full steam ahead on, to me it’s as simple as just ignore it,” he said. “Let it pass because … I’m not going to give people power that should have no power over me.”

Keep scrolling to see what Bachelor Nations stars had to say about Clayton getting shaded during the Bachelorette premiere!

Susie Evans

“Clayton handled it better, overall, than I did. I was annoyed,” the former beauty queen said on “Off the Vine” during her joint appearance with her boyfriend. “Like, come on … My fear is, like, ‘Does this open the floodgates back up of all the hate and stuff?’ So, that’s where I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, really?’ But Clayton, definitely was, like, going with the flow. … He was able to laugh.”

Kaitlyn Bristowe

The former Bachelorette host admitted she “hated all the Clayton jokes” during the premiere.
“I just didn’t like it,” the podcast host explained. “They do it every season because the guys think it’s funny. The producers, obviously, are like, ‘We don’t care.’ … I was watching that having empathy for you in those moments just being like ‘God, has he not been through enough?’”

Joe Amabile

Grocery Store Joe compared the choir’s song to Clayton getting emotional during a group date to a classroom during Michelle Young’s season before he got eliminated.
“First, they have 7 year olds make Clayton tear up on Michelle’s season, and now, they have 13 year olds singing Clayton sucks,” the Bachelor in Paradise alum tweeted.