Nathan Favro wants to 'shake' his Bachelor past with Byron Baes

After making his TV debut on The Bachelorette in 2018 and subsequently appearing on Bachelor In Paradise the following year, Nathan Favro vowed that he would never go onto a reality show again.

Now, he’s the star of Netflix’s controversial new series, Byron Baes.

“I don’t know if it's me or the places that I go, but reality TV follows me,” he tells Yahoo Lifestyle ahead of the show’s global premiere on Wednesday.

“These opportunities always seem to pop up and I was always in my head like, ‘I’ll never do reality TV again’, but when you get an email from Netflix it’s a bit different.”

The 26-year-old entrepreneur is one of the 14 stars of Netflix’s first Australian reality TV show, Byron Baes, which follows their experiences living in the idyllic coastal town of Byron Bay as they grow their businesses, connections and social profiles.

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And while Nathan admits he had some serious doubts about signing onto the show - “It was hard to conceptualise exactly what we were getting ourselves into when you can't really liken it to too much” - he reveals that a major reason why he said yes was his desire to step away from his time on The Bachelor franchise.

“I was like, this is the perfect opportunity,” he explains. “As soon as this thing drops, I'm no longer that person. No one cares about an Australian network TV show when a global Netflix series comes out, they’re two completely different leagues.

“So I was definitely keen to shake that because I've been trying to detach from that sort of thing for a long time. Obviously I have some good memories but I didn't necessarily have the most amazing past experiences, so filming your life and filming yourself as a person is a perfect way of detaching from that.”

‘I was kind of freaking out’

The Netflix series has been surrounded by controversy since it was first announced last year, with locals staging protests and launching petitions in the hopes of cancelling the production over fears that it would portray their town in a negative light.

Nathan confesses that his biggest fear when filming the show was not feeling welcome in the place he calls home, but he managed to overcome the apprehension.

“I was kind of freaking out, but I had my really close friends all around me just being like, ‘Don't worry about it, they don’t understand. They’re all out making a living as well and this is part of your hustle, why would you ever let a small bunch of people get in the way of that?’,” he detailed.

“And then I've also got born and bred locals that I'm really close with, proper business people that have lived there their whole life, and they’re like, ‘Just do your thing, this is not about them, this is about you’. They can see the good in having a show like this filmed in their home.”

He also asserts his belief that no reality TV show can serve as a representation for an entire community or location.

“If you went into Sydney and filmed a small group of people, would that represent the whole of Sydney? No,” he says. “And that’s basically what we are. We are the most intricate, crazy and wonderful bunch of people who live in the same place, and that’s what we’re representing.”

‘It’s just mind-blowing’

With all eight episodes of the long-awaited series dropping on Netflix on Wednesday, Nathan hopes that audiences will be as “blown away” by Byron Baes as he was upon watching it.

“Even aside from all the characters and drama and storyline, just the sheer beauty of how well this thing was produced, it’s just mind-blowing,” he describes.

“There is so much that goes on and viewers will honestly be sitting on the edge of their seat the whole time because of the drama, the beauty and the camaraderie of the cast.

“It's so fast-paced and it evolves so quickly. It’s like you never get a chance to get bored of it. People are going to binge-watch this like you couldn’t believe.”

All eight episodes of Byron Baes are available on Netflix tonight from 7pm AEDT.

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