Getting to Know Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After? Q&A Interview
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I was invited on an all-expenses paid trip with Disney for the opportunity of meeting/interviewing the cast and attending screening events. All opinions are my own.
So I’ll be honest – I haven’t kept up with The Bachelor very much – I’m just already watching so many great TV series. But I was instantly drawn to Ben Higgins and Lauren Bushnell and their journey as they launch into the TV series on Freeform “Ben and Lauren: Happily Ever After?”. Ben and Lauren’s journey all started on The Bachelor but now real life is setting in and their wedding is coming very quickly. Not only does it seem like a fairy tale story but they are some of the most funny and down to earth people you’ll ever meet! Lauren finds ways to bring laughter through her constant pranks and Ben is so sweet and real. But as you can imagine falling in love on national television brings it’s own set of challenges.
Our schedule was so busy the day of our Q&A session but I was ready to charge forward. During lunch we all prepped our questions and discussions as we anticipated our interviews with Ben and Lauren. This was my first set of interviews on a Disney press junket so I was pretty excited and eager to get started. We started by screening that night’s episode of Ben and Lauren: Happily Ever After? before the Q&A session. It was absolutely HILARIOUS! It really made both Ben and Lauren seem so down to earth and helped set the tone for our interviews.
I was fortunate to get a front row seat during the interview session with Ben and Lauren and joined 24 other bloggers in our discussion time. The happy couple was so open and so fun to talk with.
I hit it off well with Ben right away because if you’ve noticed during his episodes or follow Ben’s Instagram page he wears a handmade clay bracelet that says the word “hope” on it. It’s made by a company called MudLove. (You can see my “dream” bracelet above.) They actually started out in a small garage hand stamping pieces of clay to help support clean water projects in Africa. Each bracelet purchased provides ONE WEEK of clean water to someone in the Central African Republic. The bracelets come in all sorts of options and you can even customize your own!
I had some of you guys tweet me questions to ask them during our Q&A time with them and here were some of their responses:
Q: Do you guys have holiday plans, or is that too overwhelming to think about with the wedding come up? (Question came from my readers!)
A: (Lauren) “I think we finally figured it out a little bit……..‘cause both of our families live in different places, and it’s just something that probably a lot of couples go through. You’re like, wait, what family do we spend it with? So his family’s in Indiana, mine’s in Portland. I think we’re going to alternate Thanksgivings. So this year we’ll spend Thanksgiving with my family and then next year with his. And then hopefully every Christmas, we’ll try to go to both places. That is the one great thing about this whole show. It’s allowed us to have a little bit more flexibility when we’re not filming. So we can take two weeks around the holidays and go to each separate household. That’s kind of the plan as of now.“
A HILARIOUS Story from Ben about Lauren:
“So we’re in Indiana with my family a couple months ago and I see her crawl across the living room floor. And I can just see her feet scurrying behind her. She gets behind my parents’ liquor cabinet (and there’s a big window on the other side of the liquor cabinet). I’m on the other side of the window and she doesn’t think I can see her but I can see her feet sticking out. And so I just sit down. If she’s going to hide, let’s see how long she can hide for. I think she was there a good 10 minutes, just laying on the ground waiting for me to open the door.”
Lauren jumps in:
“But then he ended up scaring me, ‘cause he saw me and he banged on the window. I was caught in the act.”
Q: How long did you have your (renaissance) fair obsession for?
A: (Ben) “Since I was a little boy. We had the best day. It really was. I think one of the coolest parts is showing Lauren that people can just be completely, for lack of a better term, weird. And just be somebody else for a day…….nobody’s judging you for anything. I think that’s the coolest part.”
A: (Lauren) “We were talking and we were like – if we have kids one day it will be so fun and great. ‘Cause you have all the little girls in their princess outfits, taking pictures of the other princesses.”
Q: What’s been the hardest thing about falling in love, and now moving towards this wedding on camera?
A: (Ben) “….the next day you wake up, and you start to realize how much all of the stuff that happened on the show is actually going to affect our relationship…. My strategy was to tell her everything, right away. As truthful as I could. Let it sit, let it settle, and we’ll work through it as we went. And I think I would tell any bachelor that ends up with somebody he really cares about, or any bachelorette, to do that.”
Make sure you follow the hashtag on Twitter #BenandLaurenevent for more insights into our interview session!
You can watch Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After? on Freeform on Tuesdays at 8/7c.
AND RIGHT AFTER Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After? on Freeform is a new series called “The Letter” narrated by Zelda Williams. It airs on October 25th at 9:00-10:00 p.m. EDT. Four girls, all friends, draw names and anonymously write to the selected person a thoughtful, yet totally honest letter outlining their opinion of what needs to be changed in order to improve and transform their friend’s life for the better. The letters are brutally honest – something most of us don’t feel we can be face to face. After a week of challenges the letter writer is revealed. You can find more sneak peeks on YouTube at Freeform.
Check out this trailer for The Letter below:
