Married at First Sight Australia 2023 has been rocked by a butt dial scandal from Rupert Budgen to his wife Evelyn Ellis who ‘overheard’ a conversation between the grooms during a night out.
The 26-year-old bride claimed that she heard two grooms – Dan Hunjas and Hugo Armstrong – speaking badly about their wives Sandy Jawanda and Tayla Armstrong.
“I’m about to tell you something that I think you would want to know,” Evelyn began. “Over the weekend, some of the husbands went out to drink. Rupert butt-dialled me, he pocket-dialled me.
“I could hear the conversations between a couple of the boys very clearly, and they weren’t saying very nice things about their wives – particularly Dan.”
Evelyn’s honest confession resulted in explosive drama during the March 1 Dinner Party with Dan in the firing line from all of the brides.
However, So Dramatic! can reveal that the butt dial actually never happened and was set up by producers to create drama.
A Married at First Sight producer confirms the butt dial scandal is fake
One MAFS producer went rogue and spilled the tea to host Megan Pustetto in episode 263 of the So Dramatic! podcast, admitting the whole thing was orchestrated by producers to “blindside Dan.”
“Dan sh*t-talks Sandy to some of the guys on a boozy night out off-camera. We find out via one of the intruder grooms Rupert,” the producer dished.
“Alex and Molly [the head producers of MAFS] orchestrate a fake ‘butt-dial’ situation where one of the brides Evelyn overhears the conversation at the bar.
“Evelyn agreed because she was essentially a producer’s puppet, happy to do whatever they needed her to do in return for favourable airtime.”
The MAFS producer reaffirmed that the butt-dial “never happened” and was fake.”
“A fake confession scene was set up with Evelyn, Claire [Nomarhas] and Sandy to expose Dan’s boys’ chat,” they explained.
“Sandy arms some of the other brides with the information, with Evelyn taking the lead to do her dirty work and go after Dan at the Dinner Party. Dan gets epically blindsided by the brides.”
They added: “Sandy is very good at getting people to do her dirty work for her.”
The butt dial scandal was orchestrated by producers to protect their ‘deliberate mismatch’ of Dan and Sandy
According to the producer, the butt dial was set up as a way to help Sandy create a situation to blindside Dan and “f*ck him over” to protect the producers’ deliberate mismatching of them.
“Dan let his guard down and gave us the ammo we needed to throw him under the bus and save Endemol Shine Australia’s risk of the deliberate mismatch being exposed,” the producer revealed.
They explained that Dan was correct in calling the butt dial fake at the Dinner Party and that the timeframes Evelyn had on her call log didn’t line up with the times that Dan was at the boy’s night.
“He went home early on the night and the times Evelyn said it happened, he’d already gone home,” they confessed.
The producer explained that they used cut-and-paste editing to portray the narrative they needed.
“We edit the show to make Dan look like he is lying at the Dinner Party,” they explained.
“We switched out his denial about the butt dial and placed the denial against the accusation that he was venting to the other boys about Sandy (which he did in fact admit to when it was brought up at the dinner party).”
The insider added that in the last two weeks of the show, Dan and Sandy were in a fake relationship.
“Sandy had instigated the fake relationship and set up asking Dan to come with her to the end so that she could build her platform. She wanted to increase her exposure so she could be a voice for Indian women. Dan agreed.”
They added: “Sandy still felt rejected by Dan even though she instigated a showmance.”
Leaked texts also prove the butt dial never happened
According to text messages obtained by Yahoo Lifestyle from October 16, 2022, Dan tells Rupert, “That butt dial didn’t happen, we both know it didn’t. The convo I had with you was during daylight and was between 4:30 pm and 5:30 pm. Not after 8 pm like it was accused… We weren’t even together then.”
During the March 1 episode, Evelyn showed her phone records with three phone calls from Rupert at 8:11 pm, 8:17 pm and 8:44 pm, all lasting just one minute.
In the texts, Dan tells Rupert that he even went to the location where the conversation took place and tested whether a conversation could be heard through a phone sitting on the table.
“What’s the actual truth?” he questioned Rupert. “I got absolutely slaughtered and it wasn’t fair at all. I need you to be real with me…”
Rupert responded, saying he was “smoked that night” and “didn’t remember anything”.
He added: “Evelyn has since told me when I was smoked I’ve told her that you used to smash some good sorts back in the day and I honestly wasn’t thinking at the time and I’m so sorry I obviously know now not to discuss anything about my nights out with anyone, and I had not meant to get you caught up in that at all”.
He also admitted that he had defended Dan to Evelyn and Sandy, saying “he didn’t talk badly about his wife at all that night”.
The plot thickens!
Do the Married at First Sight cast think the butt dial happened?
As revealed in episode 261 of the So Dramatic! podcast on February 27, there was a conspiracy among the cast about whether the former Big Brother UK star embellished the story.
“Some people couldn’t — and still don’t — believe there was even a butt dial,” our insider said.
“The boys were sitting next to a live band. There is no way Evelyn could have clearly heard what they were saying through Rupert’s pants with that level of noise”
As such, a number of contestants “find it very hard to believe” she heard the entire conversation.
Much to our dismay, the whole situation “happened off-camera” and away from film crews. So, the chances of Evelyn being clued in by producers is very unlikely, too.
“What a lot of people think really happened is that Rupert came home drunk, told Evelyn and they used the butt dial to cover up how she knew so that Rupert didn’t get shit about dogging the boys,” one source said.
“Or she overheard snippets of the conversation and when he came home, she asked him about it and he told her more, then blamed the butt dial so he didn’t look like a dog.”
Rupert reportedly confessed “at the end of the season” that he DID tell Evelyn what went down that night.
However, the model “maintains that she also heard something”.
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