Bombshells! What really happens inside The Bachelor mansion
Ex-contestants reveal just how gruelling it can be to look for love on one of Australia’s favourite TV shows.
Confidential
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IN just over a week, auditions for The Bachelor Australia begin and women from across the nation will jostle for a coveted spot in the fairy-lit mansion.
They’ll dress in fabulous ball gowns and — if all goes well — emerge triumphantly in love with The Bachelor.
But is the reality of appearing on the hit Network Ten TV show as rose-coloured as it seems?
Former contestants, finally free of the gag clauses in their contracts, can now reveal what really happens behind the scenes.
Days on end of sleep-deprived nights, contestants questioned for hours until they finally produce tears, isolation, psychological strain, allegations of bullying, manipulation and extreme cruelty between contestants.
“What they showed on TV was pretty mild compared to the behaviour of what happened in the house,” says 2017 sweetheart Cobie Frost, 30, who starred opposite Bachelor Matthew “Matty J” Johnson, 30.
There is an expectation that production company Warner Bros exercise a duty of care towards contestants but the company must create entertainment, and if drama isn’t occurring naturally, it has no choice but to try to create it.
It begins with the cocktail party, when contestants meet the handsome main man and their competition, and spend the evening together sipping champagne. Or so it goes if you believe the TV show.
In truth, what happens is more of an endurance test, where the women are kept awake until daybreak over three nights of shooting.
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“The first time I met Matty, it was 4.30 in the morning,” says Leah Costa, one of the villains of last year’s series.
According to Costa, day one of production ran for roughly 24-hours straight, before she was dropped back at the hotel where contestants are put up.
They were allowed about two hours sleep before being woken and told to put the same dresses back on, and get back in the make-up chair. The requirement to wear the same clothes, hair and make-up is for continuity, so editors can later cut the three days together to look like one night.
On day two, they were up until about 6am, and day three ran to a similar gruelling schedule. But after three all-nighters drinking alcohol in humid conditions, the once sparkly-eyed contestants lose their dazzle.
Contestants pushed to the edge
Eliza St John, 33, who appeared in Richie Strahan’s season, and memorably sang to him at their first meeting, recalls an almost identical scenario.
“I remember one girl saying to me, ‘My dress is stiff with sweat’,” St John says.
Stripped of their mobile phones and money, and security checked for artificial stimulants, once contestants get to the mansion they are allocated a bunk bed.
They are guarded 24/7 by security guards at the gates and a “house mum” from the production team lives in to help out.
“Even if you tried to leave, you couldn’t,” explains Keira Maguire, 31, the villain of Strahan’s season, who has since featured in I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! and will soon appear in Bachelor In Paradise.
As it appears on television, the mansion is filled with fake flowers and candles, but is barely furnished.
Costa recalls 15 or so contestants lying on the floor to watch TV because there was nowhere to sit.
Light bulbs are missing all over the house and there is only one full-length mirror. Several contestants believe this is a tactic to get women to scramble for room, creating tension before group dates.
Even 2017 winner Laura Byrne admits that she “struggled” in the house, confirming the lack of personal space combined with sleepless nights made her feel “100 per cent” crazy.
“You’re very emotionally vulnerable towards the end of it,” Byrne says.
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With ample downtime between dates, the women filled in time reading, writing in journals, watching Netflix or exercising on a treadmill in the garage, on the tennis court or in the pool.
There is also little contact with the outside world. No newspapers or magazines. Contestants are allowed just one phone call a fortnight.
For Frost, who claims she was “bullied” and “manipulated” during production, such limited communication with her external support system made it difficult to cope.
However, she did receive support from the “amazing” production psychologist.
Sadly, though, the more contestants begin to crack, the better the TV show delivered.
“Sometimes production would just lock you in a room until you were bawling your eyes out, crying and play with your mind and make you think he (Johnson) likes you,” Frost says. “It’s just really traumatic and they do it to everyone.
(Some days) we’d be in there for hours being interviewed. It is just massive manipulation to get you to cry to get a storyline out of you, so it was hard.”
Former contestant Sandra Rato, 30, who starred in Strahan’s season, reveals satirical TV show Unreal, based on the making of The Bachelor, is exaggerated but at times en pointe to what goes on.
“A producer would come up and say, ‘Listen Sandra, there’s not enough going on here. We’re going to continue until you guys do something,” she says.
Producers calling the shots
One producer, who declined to be named, confirmed that working on The Bachelor was “full-on” and “basically like being a psychologist”.
“These people trust you. They tell you everything and then you use that information to orchestrate situations. We don’t tell them what to say because that would be bad producing. We lead them and use our questions to get them to say certain things, or we tell them what someone else has said about them and get the reaction,” the producer says.
Bachelors are spoken to through an ear piece that is worn during the rose ceremonies when he hands flowers to the women he wishes to keep in the competition.
“They tell you Matty decides (who gets a rose) but I don’t think that’s true,” says Cobie Frost.
And despite her own trauma, even Frost agrees drama and manipulated storylines are perhaps an indispensable part of the process.
“If they don’t have drama, they don’t have anything. No one wants to watch a show where someone just falls in love,” she says with a shrug.
Warner Bros, the production company behind The Bachelor, and Network Ten declined to comment.