How Lady Gaga inspired ABC’s ‘The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart,’ premiering tonight

Ed Herrera via Getty Images

Ed Herrera via Getty ImagesTonight on ABC, it’s The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart, a six-episode spinoff of the franchise which features musicians looking for love, pairing up and eventually performing together while being judged by famous artists. Host Chris Harrison says the show was actually inspired by Lady Gaga — or rather, her performance in a certain Oscar-winning movie.

“The whole premise of the show came from A Star Is Born — you know, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper — could The Bachelor create that kind of love and that kind of duet? Could we do that?” Harrison tells ABC Audio. “You’ll even see, at the start of the show, I actually mention that love that Bradley and Gaga showed. That’s the aspiration. That’s the whole point of the show.”

But it was Gaga and Cooper’s super-steamy Oscar performance of “Shallow” that really sparked the idea.

“That specific moment when Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper were performing at the Oscars and we all were watching and thinking, ‘This is wild. They could literally make a baby onstage right now,'” Harrison laughs. “And we thought, ‘Could that be done? Could we create the same thing not only love wise, but musically?'”

And what will Gaga think when she finds out how much she had to do with The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart?

“You know… it’s funny, at the end of Peter [Weber]’s [Bachelor] season, Lady Gaga was actually tweeting about the show,” Harrison points out. “She’s a part of Bachelor Nation. So my hope is that she realizes that she was a huge inspiration in making the show!”

The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET. Celebrity judges on the show will include Jason Mraz, Andy Grammer, Toni Braxton, Kesha, Train‘s Pat Monahan and more.