Georgia Love on the unseen toll The Bachelorette took on her career.

When Georgia Love was introduced to Australia as the star of the 2016 season of The Bachelorette, she had been the prime-time weekday news anchor for WIN News Tasmania for almost two years.

She had a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) from RMIT University, had been a news reporter in Gippsland and Launceston, and had covered state and national elections, court and criminal reporting, and a range of other issues and stories.

But she knew when she accepted the opportunity to appear on a reality TV show looking for love, it would stall her career. Even if it didn’t seem fair.

LISTEN: Mia Freedman interviews Georgia Love on this episode of No Filter (post continues after audio…)

“I’ve worked my butt off in news,” the 29-year-old told Stacey June and Kristie Mercer earlier this week for The Thinkergirls Pod Channel.

“You have to have intelligence. I got into a really difficult uni course, I worked really hard, I moved regionally… and then there [were] footballers wives getting jobs on TV.”

Love always felt that the traditional route she took “is the hard way to become a news presenter,” but incidentally, she says “my career in television exceeded and grew exponentially faster and larger before I went on reality TV”.

“I wasn’t naive, I wasn’t dumb,” she says. “I didn’t think great this will be a launching pad for my career, I knew that it would actually inhibit me.”

Love says those Bachelor and Bachelorette personalities who have been media trained, like Sophie Monk and Matty J, do get a boost from the show, because it’s the role of ‘presenting’ that they’re after.

“Work”. ???? @channeltennews #residentvalentinesreporter #puppylove #nicepuppies #toughdayattheoffice #careersgonetothedogs #doggoneit

A post shared by GEORGIA LOVE (@georgiealove) on Feb 13, 2018 at 11:45pm PST

“I’m not a presenter,” she says, “and as a journalist, I know how news directors think, I know how other journalists think.

“They don’t particularly appreciate or respect people who don’t go through those [traditional] avenues… they want to know that people have gone to uni, have gone regional, have worked their butts off, and I knew, despite the fact that I had done all that… if I tried to get right back into news after The Bachelorette, people would [say], ‘why is she here, she’s only here because she was on reality TV, she doesn’t have credibility, she doesn’t have expertise,’ even though I do.”

“Audiences are really fickle,” she added, “and if the most recent thing they’ve seen me on is pashing guys on national TV, that’s what they know me as.”

In the last few months, Love has started presenting news for Channel Ten, but, she acknowledges, it’s been nearly two years since she left Tasmania to do The Bachelorette. 

It’s a long time for your career to stall.

But ultimately, she’s certain the decision to do the show was worth it, because she met the man she’s been with ever since: Lee Elliott.