Reality TV Wades Into Cross-Generational Dating Pools

New York Times

29-04-2025

Age-gap relationships are nothing new when it comes to depictions of older men in TV and film plots. But a wave of recent releases, including 'Babygirl,' 'The Idea of You,' 'Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy" and 'Lonely Planet,' have zeroed in on romantic and sexual relationships between women in midlife and younger men.
Two new reality dating spinoffs are now catching up. Bravo's 'Love Hotel,' which premiered Sunday, features three over-50 'Real Housewives' — Luann de Lesseps, 59, Gizelle Bryant, 54, and Shannon Beador, 61 — looking for love among eligible bachelors whose ages range from their 30s to their 60s at a luxury resort in Los Cabos, Mexico. (Ashley Darby, 36, rounds out the group of bachelorettes.)
In the first episode Bryant asks Wale Alesh, 38, if he wants children. When he responds that he does, the cameras cut to Bryant in an interview filmed after. 'Gizelle doesn't have a uterus, so that means we aren't compatible,' she says, speaking in the third person.
Meeting Jay Bramble, 46, Bryant explained: 'My three daughters are in college. I have the house to myself, so I just walk around naked.' He responded, 'You're living the dream.'
Bryant, who is divorced and who dated the 'Winter House' cast member Jason Cameron, 38, on a past season of 'The Real Housewives of Potomac,' said it's important that audiences see mature women living vital love lives. 'Hey, ain't nobody dead because they have, like, jumped over 39,' she said in an interview.
Bryant added that the program gives the women a chance to show 'we can spend whatever days we have left in a happy place with somebody that, you know, you really want to rock out with.'
Several of de Lesseps's relationships and marriages were chronicled on 'The Real Housewives of New York,' but she said 'Love Hotel' gives her an opportunity to show that she's 'in the driver's seat' when it comes to dating. 'I'm not 20 anymore. I feel like 20, but I'm at a different stage of dating,' de Lesseps said, adding: 'I make my own money, my kids are grown.'
Their attitudes reflect the fact that Americans are marrying later now than they did 50 years ago, for example, according to median age charts for first marriages from the U.S. Census Bureau. And the experiences of more seasoned daters are not often portrayed on most reality dating shows.
ABC's 'Bachelor' franchise capitalized on that starting in 2023, when it looked to pair the 72-year-old widower Gerry Turner with the 60-and-up contestants of 'The Golden Bachelor.' The next year, Joan Vassos, then 61, searched for love on 'The Golden Bachelorette.'
This summer, the popular spinoff 'Bachelor in Paradise' will feature 35-and-under singles from the original show alongside 'Golden' hopefuls, including Gary Levingston, 66, of 'The Golden Bachelorette.'
The logistics of the show, and whether the contestants will be grouped by age, has not been announced, but the draw of heaping them all into the same show seemed clear to Levingston. Without age diversity among contestants, he said, 'you've left out a part of the market segment that's still out here.'