Bachelorette's Luke Parker Ordered to Pay Producers $100K

Luke Parker is still dealing with the fallout from his stint in Bachelor Nation. The controversial season 15 Bachelorette contestant has been ordered to pay producers $100,000 for violating his contract.

According to Entertainment Tonight, NZK Productions Inc., the reality’s show’s production company, took legal action against Parker in May, accusing him of doing unauthorized media appearances before his contract was up with the show. In June, the judge ruled in favor of NZK Productions. More recently, the company filed to enforce the $100,000 judgement previously approved by the court.

Luke Parker The Bachelorette Villian
ABC/John Fleenor

Parker caught Bachelorette Hannah Brown’s attention during the May 2019 premiere, earning the coveted first impression rose. After Parker dropped the L-word during week 2, the other men quickly deemed him the villain of the season. While he bonded with Brown over their Christian faith, she sent him packing after he slammed her for having sex with Peter Weber in the fantasy suites.

“I think the slut-shaming and issues like that, that’s a whole bigger problem in itself,” Brown told Us Weekly exclusively at the time. “It’s not really directed at me; it’s just an issue that we need to address on a bigger level.”

As the fallout from Parker’s appearance on the show played out, his family spoke out to defend him.

“He’s gotten death threats. He’s been told that is life is worthless and that he should just kill himself,” Luke’s brother, Mike Parker, claimed on Fox Nation in July 2019. “[Viewers are] telling him he needs psychological help, he has psychological issues. They are doing their best to label him with psychological problems based on a fictitious character created in a reality TV show.”

Parker, for his part, addressed his time on the show during an appearance on Reality Steve’s podcast in October 2019, several months before his contract with NZK Productions Inc. was up.

“On the fantasy suite date dinner night in Greece, she’s telling me that she doesn’t want to have sex before marriage,” he claimed about Brown. “And then she drops all of this on me. And I’m sitting there and I’m like, ‘Well all right, if that’s something you don’t want to do and now you’re telling me you’ve done it … this is the path that now you’re on when you told me you wanna be on this path, let’s go on this path together, let’s make it work, let’s figure this thing out.’ And she’s looking at me like, ‘Uh-uh, go home.’ So I was just caught off guard.”

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source: usmagazine.com