A former Married at First Sight producer has spilled their insider secrets and revealed producers get paid more money the longer their contestants stay on the show.
As revealed on episode 270 of the So Dramatic! podcast, a source who worked on The Bachelor New Zealand and Married At First Sight New Zealand dished on what really goes on behind the scenes.
In their experience, “every [producer] is given a person/pair, depending on the show” and they are rewarded with a pay bonus the more successful the contestants are.
“The longer you keep producing your person… the bigger your cheque gets the more say you get on the next show,” they said.
Naturally “every producer wants more” influence on the show and sounds like the stakes are high.
Married at First Sight’s Bronte Schofield claims producers forced her to stay on the show
The tea comes amid harrowing accounts from Married at First Sight Australia 2023 bride Bronte Schofield, who claimed she was basically held captive by the producers for several days in Skye Suites.
As revealed in episode 268 of the So Dramatic! podcast, producers allegedly “manipulated” the online beauty educator into staying with gaslighter Harrison Boon until the end of the experiment.
“Bronte was hysterical,” our insider dished. “She started losing her sh*t, saying ‘I’m leaving’.
“They [producers] said anything they could to get her to stay.”
Bronte was messaging her mum, Sue, throughout the ordeal and over text she said “the producers continued to “come into [her] room and try and convince [her] to stay”.
Our source explained the producers “had worn her down so much she was emotionally exhausted.”
They then confiscated her phone and refused to “let her leave”.
“So Bronte was literally locked in a room, unable to leave until she did what they said,” insiders said. “So in order for her to leave, she had to write stay.
“After being worn down by them for almost 12 hours, she finally gave in and did what they said. She cracked under pressure.
“It got to the point where she just wrote stay to shut them up and get out of there because she knew they weren’t going to let her leave until she did.”
Former Married at First Sight producer says claims contestants are forced to stay aren’t true
However, our reality TV insider said in their experience, they “weren’t allowed to keep them [contestants] against their will”.
Before admitting, “But yes, we do isolate them and tell them things they’d want or need to hear to keep them there longer or start drama.”
“I know in NZ we couldn’t make them do anything they didn’t want to do,” they dished.
Maybe the Australian version could have different rules?
They added there was “always a psychiatrist on call for contestants’ mental health”.
More 2023 Married at First Sight contestants claim producers made them stay
Bronte wasn’t the only MAFS contestant who claimed producers ‘forced’ to stay on the show.
Cameron Woods was reportedly told he had to “see his storyline through” and stay until Final Vows despite wanting to leave a month earlier.
“He and Lyndall [Grace] both knew it was never going to work, and they weren’t going to carry on outside of the experiment. [Producers] just kept him in to humiliate him in the end,” a source revealed.
During an appearance on Fitzy and Wippa, Harrison also claimed that he was forced to stay on the show because he was there to cause drama. And that he did!
“Yeah, I tried to leave week one,” he spilled.
“I was basically told, ‘If you leave, we don’t have a show’.
“Like, ‘there’ll be no one in there to create that friction which is essentially what we need’.”
And there you have it folks!
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