When it comes to reality TV, it’s common knowledge that the producers play a big role on what we see on screen.
But now two former reality stars have come forward and revealed the exact tips and tricks the behind-the-scenes crew did to get certain reactions out of the contestants.
In an interview with YouTuber Chrissie Swaddling, former Married At First Sight bride Mel Lucarelli revealed that producers would ask the contestants a series of quick-fire questions and then pick and choose what works best for the final edit.
“Say you have a fight with your partner,” she said. “Not only is the fight going on but then the producers will ask you 100 questions about the fight straight after.”
“Then, later on they’ll ask you again, then the next day they bring it up again. And then if you’re not answering what they want, then they just ask it in another way and I noticed a lot of my stuff, sentences were put together from different days.”
Former Bachelor contestant Monique Morley, who starred on Matt Agnew’s season, agreed with Mel’s statement and provided a hypothetical example of how the producers would manipulate what they said.
“My mother, say she breaks my foot. I’ll be like, ‘Oh my god, my mum broke my foot!'” she said.
“If they ask you it every single day for five days straight, eventually you’ll be like, ‘Oh, my mum broke my foot,'” she added, sounding more non-plussed.
“So then it’ll be like, ‘Oh, she doesn’t care’, when instead [producers] are going to pick an example of when I’m either emotional or non-emotional.”
According to a well-placed insider, Married At First Sight producers also amp up the drama for the show by spreading gossip on-set.
Showrunners reprtedly pit the contestants against each other on purpose in order to get some fights and feuds happening for the cameras.
“Producers often go around spreading rumours about the contestants in order to create dramas they can capture on camera,” the insider told New Idea.
Former bride Jessika Power even revealed that after the 2020 cast returned from a two-week filming break, bosses asked intruder Drew Brauer if he would be willing to cheat on his TV bride, KC Osborne.
“So the new intruder, Drew, he’s spoken to me a few times and he mentioned that there were situations that he was put in by producers that he didn’t want to be put in,” the 2019 bride revealed on Get Up With Krysti and Bodge.
“They were trying to make him the new Dan. And everyone knows Dan and I swapped partners on the show. They basically wanted a swap out of Drew and he said no.”
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