Artist Profile: Jenn Tran on Fame, Family, and Finding Somebody

Just over a year ago, Jenn Tran was in her pediatric rotation at Tufts Medical Center, studying to become a physician’s assistant. But interviewing her over Zoom, it’s hard to imagine that she was taking kids’ blood pressures and administering physicals that recently. It feels a world away from the woman who first graced TV screens this January as a contestant on “The Bachelor,” starred in her own season of “The Bachelorette,” and then took a turn (or two!) on “Dancing with the Stars.” Tran agreed with this assessment.

“This whole year has been really crazy,” she said.

Tran was first invited to interview for “The Bachelor” after a producer reached out to her about her TikToks on studying to become a physician’s assistant, but making the actual decision to join the cast “was really hard.”

“I didn’t want to just go on a TV show,” Tran said, “unless I really thought that I could find somebody.”

As it is, Tran’s journey to “find somebody” is now heavily documented for the world to see. It’s chronicled most obviously in her season of “The Bachelorette,” the franchise where she sought out a fiance from a cast of potential suitors over the course of nine weeks.

In her “Bachelorette” season, Tran was the first Asian American to lead “The Bachelor” franchise, male or female. It’s a distinction that she did not take lightly, and Tran was insistent on showcasing her Vietnamese heritage throughout the show, even though her family themselves didn’t fully understand the concept of reality TV.

“[My family] thought I was crazy,” Tran said with a laugh. “They thought I was getting kidnapped, the first time when I was going on ‘The Bachelor.’ They were like, ‘No way you’re going on a TV show!’”

Even so, they were gradually won over, and Tran’s mother and brother even appeared in the final episode of “The Bachelorette.” Though her mother had studied English in preparation for the show, Tran was determined that her family be portrayed as authentically as possible, and she wanted to include her conversations with her mother in Vietnamese.

“This is my life, and I want it to be as authentic to me as possible. So I was excited that we were able to speak Vietnamese, and we were able to have a translator on set so that people could understand her,” Tran said. “That was the first time I’ve ever seen Vietnamese being spoken on television.”

There is another precedent that Tran has set within “The Bachelorette” history, though it’s not something she’ll be particularly proud of. In a now-infamous finale, it was revealed that her engagement to the winner, Devin Strader, was broken off just months after filming concluded.

Because each finale is three hours long and includes a live broadcast, audience members — both in the studio and seated at home — watched as Tran broke down sobbing before confronting Strader for the first time since breaking off their engagement, all while she watched a recording of herself proposing to him. For a dating franchise in a genre already criticized for humiliating and exploiting its participants, the finale proved the final straw for some viewers, who called it “absolutely cruel and unnecessary,” according to @benhigggi on X.

This dissonance of reality and television was the most difficult aspect of the show for Tran to handle, as she had to promote the show on social media even when “things weren’t great at home.”

“I didn’t know how things were gonna end for the longest time in real life versus what was being shown on TV,” Tran said. “It was hard to go through a heartbreak and rewatch your love story.”

Even before the finale, Tran had to contend with the public’s opinions on her romantic choices as she sent suitors packing — a decision that is usually reserved for the sphere of one’s personal life. As her season aired, she found herself having “to put [her] phone down” because of the constant feedback loop on social media.

“They were really ripping me apart a lot of the time,” Tran said. “And you know, at the end of the day, I had to realize that that’s what I signed up for, being on reality TV. People want to make a spectacle of your life. They don’t understand a lot of the times that it is your life. You’re not just a character on a TV show.”

Despite this struggle, Tran drew strength from the public and her family alike. On Sept. 7, just four days after the dramatic finale aired, she threw the first pitch at the Red Sox game in Fenway Park.

“I really felt like I came home after the finale,” Tran said. “I had my friends and family there, and then everybody [at Fenway] was cheering for me, and that was exactly what I had needed after going through a very publicly devastating moment.”

As someone who has lived and worked in Boston, Tran felt that Fenway held a special place in her heart, which only made the experience more surreal.

“I’ve always wanted to get engaged at Fenway Park and have a private dinner there,” Tran said.

In lieu of a betrothal, Tran instead celebrated the end of her engagement, standing atop a bar table with a bottle as a Bostonian crowd chanted, “Fuck Devin!” beneath her. A clip went viral on TikTok, garnering over a million views.

“It was crazy!” Tran said when asked about that moment. “I mean, it was in the heat of everything; it was so funny. People started the tune. And I was like, ‘You know what? I’m just gonna go with it.’”

And go with it Tran did. Almost immediately after the finale, she was announced as a last-minute addition to the cast of “Dancing with the Stars,” which she described as “the best time of [her] life.”

“I put a lot of pressure on myself because I want to do well, and it’s something that I love so much. I wanted to keep dancing every week,” Tran said. “I would say ‘Dancing with the Stars’ was more emotional for me, which is funny, because you talk about emotions on ‘The Bachelorette,’ but on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ it brought out a different side of me.”

Sasha Farbe and Jenn Tran in "Dancing with the Stars." By Courtesy of Disney/Eric McCandless

Tran did well on the reality dance competition, finishing in seventh place with her pro partner Sasha Farber. But even after “The Bachelorette” ended, her relationships continued to be scrutinized. Speculation on the nature of her relationship with Farber dominated the tabloids, especially when the two continued to post photos and videos of them together after their elimination. When asked, Tran remained vague on the subject.

“I’m just living my life, trying to be happy and trying to do fun things,” she said.

But she also noted that she wanted to keep her dating life private in the future, particularly after how her romantic entanglements this year unfolded under the public eye.

“I think after ‘The Bachelorette’ and everything, I’m really gonna try to keep my dating life private, because I don’t think that it’s necessary for anyone else to know about besides me and my partner,” Tran said.

Even so, fans don’t stop obsessing over the photos that Tran posts of her and Farber, or the tidbits that they drop in interviews.

In the meantime, though, Tran says that she plans to return to her studies as a physician assistant.

“A big part of my decision going into reality TV was like, how are my patients?” Tran said. “But I also think that everything blows over. So I hope that when I go back it won’t be too crazy, and in a few years, nobody will know me, so I can still work as a physician assistant.”

Given her whirlwind year, it’s hard to blame her for dreaming of obscurity.

—Staff writer Angelina X. Ng can be reached at angelina.ng@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinaxng.