Married at First Sight Australia 2023’s Harrison Boon has opened up about his mental health struggles after trolling Jake Edwards’ over his suicide attempt.
ICYMI: As revealed in episode 266 of the So Dramatic! podcast on March 9, the 32-year-old builder called the 2021 groom a “simp” and accused him of using his mental health battle for a “sob story.” He also made vile remarks about a number of other past participants during their appearance on the show.
However, on March 8, the father-of-one opened up to Yahoo Lifestyle about his own mental health following his portrayal on the show, admitting it’s been tough dealing with the public’s reaction against him.
“I think the thing with online stuff is people don’t have any real respect for your private life,” he said. “The hard thing for me is seeing my parents and my son being thrown around in the media in a negative way.”
Harrison went on to say he’s glad has a “really good support network,” so the backlash hasn’t been too detrimental to his mental health.
“I feel like if I didn’t have that support network, my mental health would be in a much different space,” he admitted.
“Without that, I would’ve really struggled to get through this.
“So I think having mates that you can sort of laugh at yourself with, especially the guys that you went through it with, it’s almost like anything the public says is irrelevant because we’ve got that strong close bond and we definitely enjoy the banter and the rivalry and all that sort of stuff.”
Harrison Boon had no idea how would be Married at First Sight’s 2023 ‘villain’
Elsewhere in the interview, Harrison said he had no idea he would be this year’s ‘villain.’
“No one knows how the public is going to respond when you’re actually in the experiment,” he shared.
“You’re just going through it and then when you come out and you see that you’ve been likened to Satan, it’s a weird experience. I don’t know how hair and makeup managed to hide the horns for so long. It’s a bit different finding out that you are the villain for the season.”
He also ironically said that viewers need to remember that MAFS is a reality show made for entertainment purposes and not everything is an accurate portrayal of what happened IRL.
“When you watch it back, you realise very quickly that your relationship needs to be presented in a way that is entertaining,” he explained.
“I think the way that the show was shot was to maximise the drama from every big event. I was there for some of it and I don’t remember it being quite so dramatic, but then you watch it on television and you’re like, oh wow, they’ve really turned the volume up on this.
“So it’s a different experience but I realise that there’s a commercial aspect to the show and the way that it needs to be presented and that’s okay. I think if MAFS was shot in a documentary format it would be quite boring and quite dry.”
Harrison Boon calls Married at First Sight 2021’s Jake Edwards a ‘simp’ after he talked about his attempted suicide
**TRIGGER WARNING: The following section discusses suicide and may be triggering for some readers.
Jake opened up on 60 Minutes in 2017 about his attempted suicide and called for more mental health awareness for young men.
When the interview was shared to a private MAFS fan group on Facebook in 2021, Harrison commented: “To be honest, I cannot stand this simp.
“He’s using mental health and a sob story to get famous. ‘I tried to end my life, poor me waaa.’.. Bro a middle-class white guy raised by wealthy parents stfu [sic]. There’s people out there actually struggling.”
The word ‘simp’ is a slang insult used to troll men who are seen as too attentive and submissive to women.
Other members of the Facebook group called Harrison out for being “heartless”, “cold” and trivialising somebody’s depression.
One user also pointed out that Jake did the 60 Minutes interview “long before his current MAFS stint.”
However, Harrison doubled down on his comments saying, “You don’t have to have to agree but his ‘depression’ is by all means trivial. I think he’s playing the victim to get famous.”
He argued that mental health awareness was “important” but he believed that Jake was “using it to profit from it”.
He concluded: “Jake Edwards is a flop.”
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