“This feels very formal to talk about ‘Bachelor in Paradise,’” Michael Allio said as he settled into his place onstage at last night’s Akron Roundtable fundraiser at the John S. Knight Center.
And while there were plenty of Bachelor Nation fans at the annual event, there were also plenty of people who were simply fans of Allio.
“A lot of the people in Akron were already familiar with the things that I was working on, and they were the same people that rallied around our family during a very dark time,” Allio said in an interview after the event. “None of this is new for the majority of people in Akron, and I think that’s why it’s a very comfortable place to live and be.”
People outside of Akron learned of the 39-year-old dad when he competed on the 17th season of “The Bachelorette” in 2021. He made it to the final four but ultimately decided to leave to be with his son James. He returned to TV in 2022 for the eighth season of “Bachelor in Paradise,” where he met former “Bachelor” contestant Danielle Maltby. The two continued to date after filming wrapped but announced their break-up last September.
Allio won “Bachelorette” viewers over with his kind, laid-back demeanor and his honest discussions of grief. In 2017, Allio’s wife Laura was diagnosed with breast cancer. She began sharing her journey via Facebook, where her posts and positive attitude resonated with others. Laura died in 2019. Allio spoke openly about the impact her illness and death had on him.
“They always say time heals, but sometimes when you’re grieving, you don’t want to heal,” he told the crowd at yesterday’s event, which included many people who knew Laura.
Allio met Laura when he was a freshman at Loyola University in Chicago. She was a high school senior from Detroit there on a campus visit. “Sometimes you just get a feeling. I think sometimes we overcomplicate relationships,” he said. “Love is a very simple thing in my mind. … When you find it, go all in.”
‘The Bachelorette’ comes calling for Michael Allio
Allio didn’t audition for the reality TV show. Rather, it found him. In 2019 he started the LF Project, a nonprofit apparel brand that raises funds for individuals in need of cancer treatment.
An app developer who worked with nonprofits found Allio through social media. That app developer then told his wife – who happened to be the casting director for “The Bachelorette” – about Allio and said he would be good for the show.
Allio said no to “The Bachelorette” several times before finally agreeing. “I was about two or three years removed from Lauren’s passing. I needed something to spark my life,” he said of his decision to join the show.
Still, Allio said, when filming began, he immediately told Katie Thurston, that season’s Bachelorette, that he wasn’t going to say “I love you” and he wasn’t going to get married.
At one point Fox 8 News anchor Natalie Herbick, who moderated last night’s event, said, “I think I’m allowed to say this: They wanted you to be the Bachelor, right?”
Allio confirmed that producers wanted him to be the star of season 26 of “The Bachelor.” But, he said, “I couldn’t get over the fact that they were like, ‘Yeah, if you do this, you have to get engaged at the end.”
Behind the scenes, focus on the future
Allio did reveal some behind-the-scenes information to the crowd. He said despite how it may look, none of the conversations are scripted. He said during filming for “The Bachelorette” contestants were allowed two alcoholic drinks per hour, but they don’t eat during the dates because the chewing can interfere with the mics. He enjoyed filming “Bachelor in Paradise,” which was shot in two and a half weeks. But kissing people on camera? “Really weird,” he said.
He has no plans to return to Bachelor Nation. “For a while there, I was more pessimistic than I like to be about people’s intentions, like developing trust issues when I never had them,” Allio said.
Still, he views the experience as ultimately a positive one. “The things that I’m actually working on, I cared about before all of this, and it does give me a little bit of a platform to get it where I want it to go,” Allio said.
Right now he’s focused on building his company, St. James Therapeutics. When Laura was going through treatment, she suffered from hand-foot syndrome, which causes blistering and swelling and is a common side effect of chemotherapy. It got so bad that she couldn’t pick up their then 7-month-old son. This led the couple to create a topical ointment to help with the symptoms.
“It was just out of necessity,” Allio said after the event. “What we did was, we isolated a botanical plant and then looked at an active molecule in that plant and synthetically created it.”
Allio received a patent for the ointment and is currently raising funds for clinical trials.
To keep up with Michael Allio, follow him on Instagram at michael_alliol4.
