Married at First Sight Australia 2023‘s Tahnee Cook has revealed 2024 bride Sara Mesa was messaging her ex-boyfriend Ollie Skelton during filming.
Appearing on Yahoo! Lifestyle‘s podcast Behind The Edit, Tahnee — who recently announced her split from Ollie — discussed the marriage experiment’s recent Phone Swap task.
During the 11th season, Sara vehemently refused to hand her phone over to Tim Calwell, sparking speculation that she was “hiding” something from her husband.
“I know I wouldn’t love someone going through my phone just because I have embarrassing stuff that I wouldn’t want to explain, so I can understand,” Tahnee said of the challenge.
“So I can understand why when you’re with someone you’ve just met, you don’t want to be sharing all that stuff in there.”
Tahnee then dropped the bombshell that Sara had been messaging Ollie and “wasn’t saying the nicest things about Tim”.
“Maybe she actually didn’t want certain stuff to be shown because obviously, he’s going to have his insecurities about why. Because at the end of the day, if someone really wants to go through it, let them go through it, if you don’t have nothing to hide,” Tahnee explained.
“I remember Ollie mentioning this to me when we were together, and I was like, ‘Oh that’s a bit weird and then we just… we forgot about it.
“Then I was like ‘Oh, it’s that couple’. She didn’t really have the nicest things to say, so then watching it now, it’s interesting.”
Married at First Sight‘s Tahnee Cook reveals how Sara Mesa and Ollie Skelton know each other
Tahnee then clarified that Sara and Ollie hadn’t met before their messaging.
“I think she had reached out after listening to his podcast, you know, a couple of people reach out asking for advice and stuff. He didn’t show me the messages, which is interesting, but anyway, we’ll leave that!”
This juicy tidbit comes after sources close to Sara alleged she refused to participate in the phone swap because it would “expose” producers.
“She felt like the whole thing was just a gross invasion of privacy disguised as a constructive task for production to obtain private information,” they said.
Ollie Skelton responds to Tahnee Cook revealing he and Sara Mesa were chatting via text
Taking to his Instagram Story after Tahnee revealed he and Sara were messaging, Ollie pleaded with his ex to “please stop doing this”.
Alongside a screenshot of Tahnee’s interview, Ollie shared one message he sent to Sara.
“Advice: be your kind honest self. Show empathy but don’t pretend to give things a pass,” he wrote. “Feel comfortable to express yourself to him and I think that will get you more out of ick territory.”
He also told the bride not to stay “if it’s genuinely not working because the public will smell that”.
“Talk to the people close to you regularly,” he added. “Become friends with soundies, they give you little tips and tricks.”
The conversation was cropped, however, so it’s unclear what Sara’s initial message was, or what else the duo spoke about.
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