‘I don’t care about rumours’: Abbie Chatfield on dating, f***boys and her newest career move
From reality TV to media mogul, Abbie Chatfield courts attention wherever she goes. Now, she opens up about what it’s like to date in the public eye – and how she deals with the scrutiny of fame.
Stellar
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She courts attention wherever she goes … and with whatever she says.
So Stellar took Abbie Chatfield – rising media mogul and the newly-minted host of reality TV series FBOY Island – out to break it all down over drinks: turning heads, debunking the f*ckboy stereotype, and revealing the reality of being one of the country’s most famous women. Here’s what happened.
It’s hard to think anyone would need a reminder who Abbie Chatfield is. But as she sits down for lunch at a busy inner-city Sydney restaurant, one of the first things you notice is the gold chain around her neck with a pendant that spells out A-B-B-I-E.
The reality TV star-turned-media personality has just finished her cover shoot for Stellar, and she is ready to relax. From her hair she pulls out a plastic claw clip and lets her bouncy, beach-ready curls loose. She places it on the table, and orders a cocktail that happens to match the colour of the green mini-dress she’s wearing.
“I do feel like a drink,” Chatfield says, her voice slightly husky.
Going out – whether it’s for a lunch such as this one or for a night on the town – is a rare occurrence for Chatfield these days.
Listen to Abbie Chatfield on the Something To Talk About podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, or press play here:
“I have only socialised once in the past three months,” she admits.
“I went to the Peking Duk gig. That was a really, really good night. I hadn’t gone out in months. I have a lot of friends but when I go away for a month and film … it’s hard for me to feel like I’m getting something out of these friendships, because I don’t see anyone.”
Her ubiquitousness – Chatfield has her own radio show, Hot Nights With Abbie Chatfield, on the Hit Network, a podcast called It’s A Lot, and a new hosting role on the upcoming reality dating series FBOY Island (a Binge series based on the US format of the same name) – can make it easy to forget Chatfield has only been in the public eye for four years.
She found fame as the runner-up on the 2019 season of The Bachelor opposite Matt Agnew, but unlike most reality TV stars who chase post-show fame on Instagram, Chatfield built something different: a fast-rising empire.
As a waiter sets down the burrata she ordered, Chatfield considers what viewers can expect from FBOY Island when it premieres later this month.
“Honestly, I think it’s more ethical than shows like The Bachelor or MAFS [Married At First Sight] or Love Island,” she tells Stellar.
“The women who go into this show, they know half the men are fboys, so they are on f*ckboy patrol. They’re empowered by that.
“On The Bachelor, someone could get a great edit, and no-one knows they’re actually a piece of sh*t. And that has happened before, with people [from the series] who I have met,” she continues.
“Whereas the f*ckboys on this show … eventually it is revealed [who they are], whether after the show or during the show. So they’re getting held accountable for their actions.
“Again, it’s not going to change feminism as we know it, [but] I also think there’s room to be silly and funny. If you’re famous and a feminist, there’s a lot of room to point out ‘hypocrisy’. If you take one step wrong, if everything you do isn’t serious or [revolutionary] … I’m not going to sit here and pretend this show is going to f*cking change lives – I think it’s going to be funny.”
When asked about her own dating life, Chatfield takes a sip of her cocktail and replies: “I tend to attract softboys. They can say all the things and they don’t follow through. They over-communicate their feelings and you get, like, love bombed: ‘Oh my gosh, you really like me! And you’re not what I thought you were – you’ve surprised me!’ Then they ghost you. And you’re like, wow.”
Chatfield has dated publicly in the past, but with so much attention on her private life, would she do it again?
“No, I don’t think I would, unless I was with” – she pauses briefly to reply to a text – “someone for a long time,” she continues.
“I’m going to say unless I was engaged. I might change my mind but, right now, I don’t think I have the capacity to be with someone publicly. If they’re in this industry, it causes so much sh*t. If they’re not in the industry, they’re getting dragged into my life, which isn’t really fair.
“If I’m sleeping with someone, I will never utter their name. I don’t care about rumours, I only care if rumours are true. And I don’t want people to have anything to go off.”
Chatfield was recently linked to US rapper Yung Gravy during his Australia tour in February – their time together followed a “slut-shaming” scandal after former Bachelor star Brittany Hockley and shock jock Kyle Sandilands weighed in on the idea of Chatfield dating Gravy on The Kyle & Jackie O radio show.
“We had a night out together,” Chatfield clarifies. “We went to Ravesis [a popular bar in Sydney’s Bondi] … and then we went to his show the next night. We went out to the Ivy and got Maccas after. I made him try a chicken and cheese. It’s a late-night menu item – chicken, cheese, mayo, bun. He was like, ‘What the f*ck?’ Then he messaged me from Perth and was like, ‘I got a chicken and cheese. Babe, f*cking great.’” (For the record, she says, they are friends: “He texted me this morning.”)
Chatfield takes a more serious tone when asked about the reality of dating her.
“It can be sh*t because there are people I’d like to go on a walk with or have a coffee with and I just don’t want to start rumours,” she says.
“If I have a first date with someone, and someone takes a photo of us, then we have to have the conversation of how we’re going to ‘address it’ in the media. We have to have the conversation, after a first date, of what are we? And it kind of sucks the fun out of everything. If you go to the same event, you have to text: are we going to say hello [in public]?”
Chatfield pauses. “Can I just take a photo for someone, of me eating this burrata?” she asks, snapping a selfie before exclaiming, “Wait, that looks weird.”
Back to her love life. “After my last break-up I was so avoidant,” she reveals. “I kind of wanted to spend this year focused on my friendships and having sex and intimacy as an add-on, not as something I was striving for.”
The reality, she concludes, is that “I just don’t think that I’m in real working order to be in a relationship. I’m turning 28 in June. I’m like, oh, everyone I date now, they want to settle down, or they’re like, ‘I want to kind of know if it’s going somewhere.’”
On that note, Chatfield has somewhere to go: into a studio to record her episode of the Stellar podcast Something To Talk About. She picks up the plastic hair clip from the table, and we head out the door.
FBOY Island premieres on May 29 on Binge.
Originally published as ‘I don’t care about rumours’: Abbie Chatfield on dating, f***boys and her newest career move
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