New Block contestant slams the show on-air: ‘A**holes’

Two episodes into The Block 2024 and one contestant is already fuming about her treatment – while her partner breaks down in tears.

We’re only two episodes in to The Block’s new season, and already the cracks are starting to show for one team.

WA couple Jesse and Paige are having a shocker of a first week, with 29-year-old carpenter Jesse doubting his ability to get their first room finished – a crisis that left him hiding in his tent on site, tearfully venting on the phone to his mum.

Jesse seemed to get over that hiccup fairly quickly, but then it was his fiance Paige’s turn when she got pushback on her demand to change their house’s layout.

She wanted to move the house’s master bedroom up on the mezzanine level, away from the rest of the bedrooms. The space that was originally allotted to be the master bedroom would then be divvied up as two more guest bedrooms.

But Paige’s proposal was met with a less-than-enthusiastic response from The Block’s architect Julian Brenchley, who’d drawn up the plans himself. He noted there was a method to his layout, as family homes usually keep bedrooms grouped together in one end of the house.

Paige clashes with The Block's architect Julian Brenchley.

“In a house of this size, you try and keep the family together, in the ‘private’ space,” he told them, reasoning that most potential home buyers would not want to sleep on the exact opposite end of a large house as their children.

“Good luck with it – I think you’re probably not on the right track,” he told them.

A representative from Kinsman wardrobes, on-site to take each team’s orders, also had some unwanted feedback: Paige’s newly-carved-out guest bedrooms would be too small to properly accommodate built-ins. She walked Paige through the maths, explaining that with a bed in each room, the doors on any built-in wardrobes would barely open.

So it was back to Brenchley’s original floorplan – but not before Paige fumed at the cameras about her idea being shut down.

“I am not going to be hardballed. There was a lot of faces behind the camera, eye rolls, huffing and puffing,” she claimed.

Paige says the “arseholes” on The Block are being rude to her.

“I’m sick of the way everyone talks to me in meetings like this. I’m not doing anything wrong and they’re talking to me like arseholes,” she said, breaking down in tears. “I don’t know why people have to be rude.”

Then she turned on her fiance, yelling: “You need to find some sort of compromise for me; I’ve been nothing but accommodating for you.”

Speaking to the cameras, Paige said she was “raging” at the response she got from both The Block’s architect and the Kinsman representative: “You go into these consultations, and I have no idea why no-one’s polite. Don’t talk like an arsehole.”

Of Brenchley, she said: “I respect him, because he’s a great architect, but I actually don’t give a f**k about his opinion.”

Paige turns on her fiance Jesse.

Two episodes in, and this is the second episode that Paige has claimed people on The Block are treating her rudely – in Monday’s episode, she had a similar complaint about a shop worker on-hand to help her design her bathroom.

Meanwhile, The Block host Scott Cam told news.com.au last week that they’ve noticed a real difference in contestants across the 20 years of the show – and it’s not a positive one.

“The contestants are less resilient than they were 20 years ago, 15 years ago,” Cam said.

“There’s more expectation of it getting easier, but it’s not. It gets harder. And people aren’t ready for how hard it is.”

Originally published as New Block contestant slams the show on-air: ‘A**holes’