M-Net is revealing how - and why - it chose Marc Buckner as the bachelor for the second season of The Bachelor SA that will start filming in October - including how the channel executives' first "date" to suss him out took place at the Cape Town International Airport of all places.
"Finding a bachelor for a show like The Bachelor SA is probably one of the hardest processes that we have been through as a team," explains Kaye-Ann, M-Net's head of local content and independent films.
In October, production company Rapid Blue will start filming the second season of The Bachelor SA, set for broadcast on M-Net (DStv 101) from sometime in February 2020.
Following Lee Thompson as the bachelor of the first season, M-Net and Rapid Blue found Marc Buckner, also from Cape Town, as the bachelor for the new local season of the dating reality show that is done according to the Warner Bros. International Television Production (WBITVP) format.
"It is so difficult to do because there's a lot of guidance we get from the format and from the format holders but for our M-Net audience and from what we know will work for this format there's a lot of boxes to tick."
"There were so many people that we had to go through, so many "dates" we had to go on - we actually met Marc Buckner at the Cape Town International Airport, we met up with him at the airport and had a discussion with him, but there are a plethora of boxes that need to be ticked in order for us to satisfy a lot of different things."
"The most important thing is that the guy must actually really want to be in a relationship - really wants to settle down and find someone and is ready for a relationship," says Kaye-Ann Williams.
"Then on another level they need to work on television. They need to be able to communicate their feelings. They need to have some kind of self-actualisation, in a sense that they know what they want, they know who they are, they know what they're looking for."
"But then also, when you chat to him, there needs to be some kind of engagement - he needs to have personality, he needs to have a sense of humour, he needs to have an opinion on things; he needs to narrate his own journey as well."
"So when we speak to him, we listen to him and how he narrates his own journey. We ask: 'Tell us about yourself? Tell us about your life? Where you've been, what you've been through?' And we listen to how he tells us his own story but also how he's observed his own life."
"That needs to translate through to the M-Net audience watching. So there are so many different levels that you need to hit that it's such an almost impossible thing to find. We really, really went through a lot of guys."
"The Bachelor SA process to find a bachelor is normally a closed process. The only thing we did differently this time around for the second season is that we opened it up to radio stations who went to see is there anyone out there that we don't know of."
"It's mainly a closed-off process and we approach people, we work through agencies and websites and we have tentacles and people who help us, but this time around we decided to open it up a bit to see what can people bring us," says Kaye-Ann Williams.
"Marc Buckner was actually a lead that came through from two different directions. One was Instagram and one was something else - I'm not going to say who it was but it was someone really amazing. But it was a great process."
Jan du Plessis, director of M-Net channels, says "Kaye-Ann and I went together when the lead came out way and Marc Buckner happened to be in Cape Town. And we immediately investigated it and he's the result as the next bachelor."
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