The Bachelorette bachelor Dotun Olubeko has revealed that a feeling in his soul led him to Charity Lawson on the show’s twentieth season.
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Dotun is one of Charity’s Final 4 bachelors who will be shown receiving a hometown date on The Bachelorette’s upcoming July 31 episode.
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Dotun is a frontrunner to win Charity’s heart on the show’s twentieth season, but according to the 30-year-old integrative medicine specialist from Nigeria who currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, he almost didn’t compete on The Bachelorette.
“Honestly, I got on [The Bachelorette] only two weeks before filming started,” Dotun revealed during a recent appearance on the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast, which is co-hosted by Bachelor in Paradise spouses Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt.
“It was a really short time period, apparently one of the shortest, I’ve been told. It was just happenstance where someone dropped out and someone thought of me to fill that role.”
A friend apparently recommended Dotun as a cast member and so Dotun “jumped in at that two-week point.”
“So I was going through that [casting] process for those two weeks, and I was kind of unsure if I was really going to go through with it. It was so [last minute], I didn’t have time to think about it,” Dotun explained.
But Dotun explained that watching Charity on The Bachelor: The Women Tell All for Zach Shallcross’ season changed his mind and gave him the push he needed to commit to becoming a contestant.
“It was truly seeing Charity on The Women Tell All for Zach’s season. I was watching it because they were going to announce the Bachelorette, and I was like, ‘Great! Maybe this will shift my mood or shift my decision,'” Dotun recalled.
“I was looking at all these beautiful girls from Zach’s season and they’re all smart and they’re all amazing. I was like, ‘This is great.’ But nothing was doing it [for me]. I was like, ‘Can I really pour my heart into something like this?'”
But then The Bachelorette host Jesse Palmer announced Charity as the franchise’s new leading lady at the end of the broadcast.
“I saw Charity and I was a fan of Charity. I saw her and I was like, ‘There is something about this person that…’ I don’t know. It felt like my soul was speaking, like, ‘Hey, you should go for this,'” Dotun shared.
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The Bachelorette suitor added, “And so as soon as I saw her, that was kind of the deciding factor, truly, for me to be like, ‘Okay, I am actually going to go through with this.'”
Dotun admitted that earlier that morning, hours before The Women Tell All aired, he was sold on the idea of staying home and resuming his normal daily life.
“That morning… I was certain I was not going to [go on the show] because it was too short [notice] and financially — for work and my career — it just felt like it wasn’t the right timing,” Dotun said.
“But once I saw Charity at the Tell All, I was like, ‘Okay, I think something is telling me to go.’ And so that’s why I went for it.”
When Joe asked for clarification on whether Dotun had applied for The Bachelorette or was nominated, Dotun replied, “Neither.”
The Bachelorette bachelor explained how two weeks before filming started, he was doing some work and happened to receive a text message from one of his roommates, who apparently knew someone with ties to The Bachelorette production or casting department.
“He was like, ‘Hey, do you want to go on The Bachelorette?’ I thought he was kidding because we mess around all the time… I was like, ‘Haha, you’re funny,'” Dotun said.
“And he was like, ‘No seriously, send me pictures.’ Long story short, within an hour, I had one of the casting agencies reach out to me.”
Dotun said one of Charity’s original bachelors — who had been nominated for the show — dropped out for work or for personal reasons, and so his roommate thought Dotun would make a great replacement.
Dotun therefore said “yes” to the opportunity and finally decided to participate in the reality dating competition.
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Dotun shared with Serena and Joe how he looked at The Bachelorette as a once-in-a-lifetime chance.
“Going through that [casting] process, it’s tough to do in two weeks, but things just kept working out, just enough, as if [someone] was telling me, ‘Don’t close this door. Try to pursue this and consider this,'” Dotun shared.
“So as much as I’m a logical person, I do have a side of me that believes in fate and bigger things, and I try to let that be a driving force for some of my decisions. I still try to be thoughtful, but I definitely let [fate] influence me.”
Dotun concluded, “And I know that, for me, some of the most cherished things that I’ve ever had or experienced have come from these type of situations, where I was kind of leaning towards something and then it feels like life is funneling you in a certain direction.”
Dotun was the first person in The Bachelor franchise to ever receive back-to-back 1-on-1 dates.
“When I’m with him, there are a lot of things we talk about and that I haven’t necessarily shared with a lot of the other people,” Charity said on the July 27 episode of the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast.
“So I think, for me, that was almost stimulating in the sense that it left me wanting or craving for more.”
The rest of Charity’s Final 4 bachelors are Aaron Bryant, Joey Graziadei and Xavier Bonner.
Charity previously admitted that she fell in love with more than one bachelor while filming her The Bachelorette season.
“I will be honest… I don’t think I prepared myself for that possibility because, I mean, in the real world, you don’t have the opportunity to date multiple people at the same time and then form these connections,” Charity explained on Good Morning America earlier this month.
“So for me, [falling in love with multiple people] definitely came as a shock. I was like, ‘How do I help myself with this and process what I’m feeling?'”
Charity said journaling helped her self-reflect and navigate complex emotions as her journey to find The One neared its end.
And Charity apparently followed her heart, which never led her astray.
“I will say that [my gut and intuition] were spot on this season, like, spot on!” the 27-year-old child and family therapist revealed on “Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe” podcast earlier this summer.
“This season has truly taught me a lot more about trusting my intuition, because it wasn’t wrong.”
Still though, Charity described her Fantasy Suites as “rocky” and her finale as extremely “emotional.” She warned viewers earlier this summer to “put your seatbelts on” for this wild ride.
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Click here to read spoilers about Charity’s The Bachelorette season and who Charity picked as her winner.
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About The Author:
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.