Lifestyle
'The Bachelor,' Ukraine edition, features a veteran who lost both legs in the war
Oleksandr Budko, a 28-year-old Ukrainian war veteran, whose military call sign is Teren, poses for a portrait in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18. Budko, a double amputee, participated in the Ukrainian version of the TV show The Bachelor.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
KYIV, Ukraine — Oleksandr Budko looks like a leading man. He’s sandy-haired and blue-eyed, with muscular tattooed arms and the chiseled face of a movie star.
“I’m a military veteran, an activist and writer. And I’m also The Bachelor,” he says in this season’s Ukrainian edition of the popular reality TV franchise.
The Bachelor, or Kholostiak in Ukrainian, is produced by Starlight Media and Warner Bros. International Television, and it airs on STB, a Ukrainian channel. This season, its 13th, premiered on Nov. 1.
Inna Bielien, 29, a German language translator, poses for a portrait at home in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Dec. 13. She is one of the female contestant of the Ukrainian version of the TV show The Bachelor.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
In one episode, Budko is on a rock-climbing date with a wholesome translator named Inna Bielien.
“Oh my God,” she says, as she hangs off the cliff.
“Don’t worry, I will be very close, right behind you,” he says, as he helps her scale the rock face.
What goes unsaid is that Budko is doing this on prosthetic legs, clearly visible because he’s wearing shorts. He’s a double amputee. He represents the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have lost limbs since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. An adviser to Ukraine’s Sports and Youth Ministry put the number at around 100,000 last year.
Oleksandr Budko, with the call sign Teren, lost both legs on the front line in Ukraine’s battle against the Russian invasion.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
Their visibility — in fashion magazines, on catwalks and now a popular reality TV series — shows how much the war has affected Ukraine.
“Still,” he tells NPR in an interview, “there is still a problem with stigma. I went on The Bachelor to help address it.”
“I realized then I would lose my legs”
Budko, 28, grew up in western Ukraine and was working as a barista in a coffeeshop in Kyiv when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He enlisted and was soon on the front line. That summer, his unit had stalled while trying to push Russian troops out of northeastern Ukraine. During a lull in the fighting, the unit decided to rest. Budko lay down in a trench.
“Then something hit that caused the trench to crumble,” he says.
Russian troops had shelled the trench. Budko was buried in earth, twisting in pain as his fellow soldiers dug him out.
“I was conscious the entire time,” he says. “And I also realized then that I would lose my legs.”
Budko recovered through intensive, and often excruciating, physical therapy. He threw himself into sports, even competing in swimming at the 2023 Invictus Games. He also wrote a book and performed in a modern ballet.
“There was no point in me being angry at anyone or anything about what happened,” he said. “It was better to do something good instead.”
Oleksandr Budko tries to ride a unicycle at the Recovery rehabilitation center in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18. He goes to rehabilitation centers to share the information on the process of his recovery, logistics to obtain prosthetics and about the possibilities for injured veterans.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
In the opening to The Bachelor, he jumps on a motorcycle, tucks a red rose into his leather vest-jacket, and speeds away. Each episode features beautiful young women vying for his attention, often with the built-in melodrama typical of reality shows.
“I wanted to show the possibilities,” he says. “I wanted to give people faith.”
“You are examples of courage and heroism”
The people he’s talking about are fellow wounded veterans. Budko visits them often, and they’re a tough crowd — exhausted, skeptical, emotionally distant.
“They never allow themselves to show any feelings of failure,” he says.
On a recent afternoon, he stops by a hospital in Kyiv where dozens of veterans are recovering from amputations. He cringes when he hears their screams of pain during physical therapy.
Injured soldiers at the Recovery rehabilitation center listen to Oleksandr Budko, a 28-year-old veteran, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18. During his visits to rehabs, soldiers ask Budko lots of practical questions about things like prosthetics and health care.
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
Budko walks into a room filled with wounded soldiers in wheelchairs and sitting on beds. He introduces himself with his military call sign, Teren. It’s the name of a thorny wild plum. In Ukrainian folklore, it symbolizes obstacles and overcoming them.
“Do not focus only on your injury, because remember — you are examples of courage and heroism,” he tells the soldiers. “You are not disabled.”
Rostyslav Andrusenko, a doctor helping the men recover, says many are depressed. They fear they will no longer be useful to their families or society.
“They ask me if they will ever walk again or play football with their friends or help their kids, all the everyday things that they did before,” Andrusenko says.
Oleksandr Budko, whose military call sign is Teren, talks to injured soldiers at the Recovery rehabilitation center in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18.
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
Budko gives a pep talk to the soldiers and also cracks a few jokes that don’t quite land. The men politely clap when he finishes and then ask a lot of practical questions, like where to get the best prosthetics.
Mykola Kovalenko, a married father of two, badly injured his leg on the front line after a mine exploded and may have to have it amputated. He asks Budko how to navigate medical bureaucracy, which he equates to “passing through the seven circles of hell.”
Budko promises to help, and Kovalenko finally cracks a smile. He says his wife and two teenage daughters love this season of The Bachelor.
Ukrainian war veteran Oleksandr Budko (right) talks to an injured soldier, Mykola Kovalenko, 36, at the Recovery rehabilitation center in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
“What he is doing is very helpful,” Kovalenko says. “He is showing guys like me, guys who are injured, that all is not lost, that we shouldn’t give up, that we should keep trying.”
Budko says soldiers rarely discuss their feelings about relationships and self-image with him. He does offer his number, though, in case they do want to talk at some point.
“Everyone has their own sensitive topics that they’re ashamed to talk about,” he says, including intimacy and the fear of being pitied by potential partners.
Love and war
Inna Bielien, 29, German language translator who is a contestant on the Ukrainian version of the TV show The Bachelor, shows a photo from behind the scenes of show, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Dec. 13.
Oksana Parafeniuk/for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk/for NPR
The war has also touched the women on the show. One is a widow whose husband was killed on the front line. Another is a soldier. Inna Bielien, the translator on the rock-climbing date, is also a humanitarian volunteer who sources and sends supplies to Ukraine’s troops.
NPR meets her in her stylish apartment in a Kyiv neighborhood that’s often hit by Russian drones. She talks about a soldier, Vadym, she loved who was killed early in the war. She says she was still holding out hope when she got the call about him.
“I remember thinking, Lord, I hope he’s alive, even with no arms and no legs, because it is better to come back without limbs than not come back at all,” she says.
Even so, she says, many Ukrainians struggle to talk to wounded veterans.
“I was told that if you see a soldier, you say thank you and put your hand to your heart,” Bielien says. “Asking about amputations, whether that crosses personal boundaries, that is still new for us.”
Oleksandr Budko talks to a participant at the Donbas Media Forum conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18. Budko, a Ukrainian veteran who lost both legs on the front line, stars in the Ukrainian version of the TV show The Bachelor.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
Budko says the series helped show that it’s OK to ask questions, especially when it comes to intimacy.
“Like, ‘Does it hurt when I touch your limbs there?’ and so on,” he says.
Budko says he feels he has done some good on the show. And he now has a girlfriend, but won’t say if it’s Bielien, who says she fell in love with him, or someone else.
He can’t reveal anything, he says, until the season finale on Friday.
Jessie Buckley has been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of William Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet.
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Kate Green/Getty Images
Actor Jessie Buckley says she’s always been drawn to the “shadowy bits” of her characters — aspects that are disobedient, or “too much.” Perhaps that’s what led her to play Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet.
Buckley says the film, which is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, offered a chance to counter a common narrative about the playwright’s wife: that she “had kept him back from his genius,” Buckley says.
But, she adds, “What Maggie O’Farrell so brilliantly did, not just with Agnes and Shakespeare’s wife, but also with Hamnet, their son, was to bring these people … and give them status beside this great man. … [And] give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman.”
The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best actress for Buckley. In it, she plays a woman deeply connected to nature, who faces conflicts in her marriage, as well as the death of their son Hamnet.
Buckley found out she was pregnant a week after the film wrapped. She’s since given birth to her first child, a daughter.
“The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness,” she says. “A mother’s tenderness is ferocious. To love, to birth is no joke. To be born is no joke. And the minute something’s born into the world, you’re always in the precipice of life and death. That’s our path. … I wanted to be a mother so much that that overrode the thought of being afraid of it.”
Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn plays her brother Bartholomew in Hamnet.
Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
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Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
Interview highlights
On filming the scene where she howls in grief when her son dies
I didn’t know that that was going to happen or come out, it wasn’t in the script. I think really [director] Chloé [Zhao] asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. Of course, leading up to it, you’re aware this scene is coming, but that scene doesn’t stand on its own. By the time I’d met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet, and [co-stars] Paul [Mescal] and Emily Watson, and all the children and we really were a family. And Jacobi Jupe who plays Hamnet is such an incredible little actor and an incredible soul, and we really were a team. …
The death of a child is unfathomable. I don’t know where it begins and ends. Out of utter respect, I tried to touch an imaginary truth of it in our story as best I could, but there’s no way to define that kind of grief. I’m sure it’s different for so many people. And in that moment, all I had was my imagination but also this relationship that was right in front of me with this little boy and that’s what came out of that.
On what inspired her to pursue singing growing up
I grew up around a lot of music. My mom is a harpist and a singer and my dad has always been passionate about music, so it was always something in our house and always something that was encouraged. … Early on, I have very strong memories of seeing and hearing my mom sing in church and this quite intense mercurial conversation that would happen between her, the story and the people that would listen to her. And at the end of it, something had been cracked between them and these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes. And I guess I saw the power of storytelling through my mom’s singing at a very young age, and that was definitely something that made me think I want to do that.
On her first big break performing as a teen on the BBC singing competition I’d Do Anything — and being criticized by judges about her physical appearance
I was raw. I hadn’t trained. I had a lot to learn and to grow in. I was only 17. I think there was part of their criticism which I think was destructive and unfair when it became about my awkwardness, or they would say I was masculine and send me to kind of a femininity school. … They sent me to [the musical production of] Chicago to put heels on and a leotard and learn how to walk in high heels, which was pretty humiliating, to be honest, and I’m sad about that because I think I was discovering myself as a young woman in the world and wasn’t fully formed. … I was different. I was wild, I had a lot of feeling inside me. I could hardly keep my hands beside myself and I think to kind of criticize a body of a young woman at that time and to make her feel conscious of that was lazy and, I think, boring.
On filming parts of the 2026 film The Bride! while pregnant
I really loved working when I was pregnant. I thought it was a pretty wild experience, especially because I was playing Mary Shelley and I was talking about [this] monstrosity, and here I was with two heartbeats inside me. Becoming a mom and being pregnant did something, I think, for me. My experience of it, it’s so real that it really focuses [me to be] allergic to fake or to disconnection.
Since my daughter has come and I know what that connection is and the real feeling of being in a relationship with somebody … as an actress, it’s very exciting to recognize that in yourself and really take ownership of yourself.
I’m excited to go back and work on this other side of becoming a mother in so many ways, because I’ve shed 10 layers of skin by loving more and experiencing life in such a new way with my daughter. I’m also scared to work again because it’s hard to be a mother and to work. That’s like a constant tug because I love what I do and I’m passionate and I want to continue to grow and learn and fill those spaces that are yet to be filled — and also be a mother. And I think every mother can recognize that tug.
On the possibility of bringing her daughter to travel with her as she works
I haven’t filmed for nearly a year and I cannot wait. I’m hungry to create again. And my daughter will come with me. She’s seven months, so at the moment she can travel with us and it’s a beautiful life. And she meets all these amazing people and I have a feeling that she loves life and that’s a great thing to see in a child. And I hope that’s something that I’ve imparted to her in the short time that she’s been on this earth is that life is beautiful and great and complex and alive and there’s no part of you that needs to be less in your life. You might have to work it out, but it’s worth it.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Bruce Campbell
I’m Battling Cancer
Published
Bruce Campbell has revealed he has cancer, but says it’s a type that’s treatable, though not curable.
“The Evil Dead” actor shared the news Monday in a message to fans, writing, “Hi folks, these days, when someone is having a health issue, it’s referred to as an ‘opportunity,’ so let’s go with that — I’m having one of those.” He continued, “It’s also called a type of cancer that’s ‘treatable’ not ‘curable.’ I apologize if that’s a shock — it was to me too.”
Campbell said he wouldn’t go into further detail about his diagnosis, but explained his work schedule will be changing. “Appearances and cons and work in general need to take back seat to treatment,” he wrote, adding he plans to focus on getting “as well as I possibly can over the summer.”
As a result, Campbell says he has to cancel several convention appearances this summer, noting, “Treatment needs and professional obligations don’t always go hand-in-hand.”
He says his plan is to tour this fall in support of his new film, “Ernie & Emma,” which he stars in and directs.
Ending on a determined note, Campbell told fans, “I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch … and I expect to be around a while.”
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
Paramount Pictures
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Paramount Pictures
The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
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