The Bachelor's Christina Mandrell Has a Surprising Connection to Taylor Swift

The Bachelor contestant Christina Mandrell’s appearance in a 2008 Taylor Swift music video is going viral after the season 27 premiere of the ABC dating series. Are you... ready for it?

By Alexandra Bellusci Jan 26, 2023 10:09 PMTags
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Long live Christina Mandrell's music video cameo.

Nothing gets past the Swifties, and the season 27 premiere of The Bachelor was no different, as when contestant Christina introduced herself to Zach Shallcross, Taylor Swift fans realized they had seen her before—in the Grammy winner's 2008 music video for her hit single "Fifteen." 

In fact, in a Jan. 25 TikTok, a user edited together a video featuring the 26-year-old on the ABC dating show before cutting to her appearance in the music video, in which she stands under an umbrella in a school uniform, chatting with a friend before starring off into the camera.

And Christina was quick to poke fun at herself, posting a footage from the Taylor video along with a shot of herself on The Bachelor starring intensely at Zach

"Apparently I look at Zach the same way I look at Taylor Swift," she captioned the Instagram post. "New Conspiracy theory, first I stared at Taylor, then stared at Zach, which inevitably leads to me crying on the STAIRs." 

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Her followers filled in the blank space of the comment section with their excitement.

Bachelor Nation member Amanda Stanton wrote, "If this was me, I would never ever shut up about it btw lol," while another user added, "Lol this is epic."

And although Christina has yet to reveal how the casting went down, Taylor has previously spoken about the inspiration behind the song, which was off her 2008 album Fearless.

"I wrote it about the journey that my best friend, Abigail, who, you know, we're still tight," the "Lavender Haze" singer told iHeartRadio in 2021. "We met in freshman year of high school and we both had these trials and tribulations and lessons and adventures and mishaps and heartbreaks and glorious excitements and let downs."

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Taylor noted that she wanted to "tell the story of being 15, kind of through the lens of a friendship."

"You see what these two people go through together as friends and on their own," she continued. "It still gets me, this song, because those were all real insecurities of like walking in your freshman year and thinking like, 'Where am I going to fit in, in this massive ocean of people?' Like, 'Where's my locker? How do I fit in here?' You're like, 'Who am I going to be?' That's a question that we ask ourselves a lot through the course of life, but I think never more than when we're 15."

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