Married at First Sight Australia producers have called out participants for blaming the edit for making them look bad.
The latest season is being touted as the “most polarising” yet, containing walkouts, scandals, an age-diverse cast and a same-sex couple.
After 11 seasons, brides and grooms claiming the show manipulated their portrayal and storylines is pretty much a given. As such, producers expect some backlash from their stars.
Ahead of the January 29 premiere, executive producer and Endemol Shine Director of Content Tara McWilliams, as well as producers Alex Spurway and Mollie Harwood spoke to Yahoo! Lifestyle about why participants tend to use the edit as a scapegoat.
“I think one thing that this experiment does is that it holds a mirror up to yourself,” MAFS producer Alex said.
“So when you finally watch that back, sometimes people can get a shock as to how they thought they may have behaved compared to how they actually have behaved.
“We can’t make them do what they didn’t actually do,” MAFS producer Mollie added. “We can’t force people to say things, we can’t put words in their mouths. Like, if they said it, they said it, if they did it, they did it.”
Meanwhile, Tara said she understands the difficulty reality stars face when it comes to owning their behaviour.
“I imagine it’s very hard for them to sit down and watch, especially months later. It’d be very difficult to reflect on that and to take ownership of it, because what we essentially really ask them to take ownership,” she said.
Married at First Sight producers say blaming the edit is a ‘safe excuse’
Tara went on to tell the outlet that casting the blame on their on-screen portrayal is an easy cop-out.
“Instead of [owning their behaviour] the alternative is that the edit is a very safe excuse. The biggest gripe they seem to have is, ‘OK I was an a**hole in that moment, but what about all the other times I was nice?'” she explained.
“And we would counter that with, ‘Well you were still an a**hole in that moment’. We can’t show every moment of everyone, but we try and show as much as we can, because people aren’t one-dimensional.”
As for audiences’ harsh criticism of MAFS stars, Tara said people “always remember the bad stuff” over the good elements.
“We always remember the controversial stuff… we do that in our own lives, and the audience is no different,” she explained.
“We warn them, before we start shooting the show, you’re going to be an a**hole, the Australian audience is gonna see you being an a**hole, and you’re going to be judged on that,” Tara continued.
“And they may say, ‘You made my partner look like the good one, and I’m the bad one’, and it’s like that’s how we all saw it: we were shooting it, we were editing it, and we were giving them advice. That’s how everyone else saw it; it was everyone else’s reality but yours.”
Married at First Sight Australia producers address viewer trolling of participants
Married at First Sight stars arguably face the most backlash of any reality TV contestants, with countless participants speaking out about their experience with online trolls.
Addressing this with Yahoo! Lifestyle, producer Tara acknowledged that this is a “difficult” element of appearing on the show.
“The public is brutal, and they’re brutal about anyone in the public space. We’re in an age where anyone on social media gets caned for what they do,” she said.
“So I take my hat off to anyone and to all the participants who have put their hand up and said, ‘I’ll be a part of this.’ It’s very brave to do that.”
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