Laurina Fleure: From dirty street pie to paradise
A SLIP of the tongue transformed The Bachelor’s Laurina Fleure into a reality-TV villain. But public derision won’t stop her from trying again to find romance... if not necessarily redemption.
Stellar
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FOUR years ago, Laurina Fleure stepped out of a limousine in a fitted dark-green dress, hair immaculately coiffed, face lit up with expertly applied highlighter and the glow of a woman embarking on a much-awaited first date. She clutched the hand of her beau as he unveiled the venue for their dinner: the iconic, yet decidedly no-frills, Harry’s Cafe de Wheels in Sydney. And then she let rip.
“Everyone else gets Ferraris, super yachts and private jets... and [I] get a dirty street pie,” Fleure lamented to viewers across Australia who were watching as she and Blake Garvey embarked on their doomed night out in an episode of The Bachelor Australia. And with those words, a reality-TV star was born.
While Fleure, 34, may not have intended to enter the phrase “dirty street pie” into the national lexicon that night, what she had long known from a young age was that television would definitely get her noticed. “I used to sit in front of the mirror when I was about three years old and sell myself toothpaste,” she tells Stellar with a laugh. “And I used to play cooking shows as well.”
In person, Fleure is as frank and forthright as she appears onscreen — but she also comes armed with a warmth viewers have rarely seen. She laughs easily. She jokes about liking sausage rolls far more than those pies. She talks about a wholesome and freedom-filled childhood that was punctuated with the occasional “sneaking out my bedroom window to play in the primary school oval at three o’clock in the morning”. It’s hardly the conduct of a manipulative, hate-fuelled diva — accusations that were hurled at her in the wake of her time on The Bachelor and again two years later as part of the cast of I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! in 2016.
Asked what it is like to be singled out as the villain, Fleure is pragmatic. “[The shows] have a recipe. They’ve got a template and a format, and sometimes you can fall into this format,” she tells Stellar.
Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, a former producer on the US version of The Bachelor who went on to co-create the drama UnREAL, a send-up of the dating-show genre that airs on Stan, tells Stellar that from the moment contestants arrive and cameras start rolling: “You have a pretty clear sense of who can do what. But then again, people surprise you. And the best villain is a sneaky villain who can pass for nice.”
Fleure has another, slightly less-calculated excuse for the behaviour she sometimes exhibits onscreen. “I am very non-conformist. It just comes naturally with being a Gemini, because most Geminis I meet are exactly the same, and so I think you’re naturally going to fall into the ‘villain’ box. It’s not that you’re attempting to be an arsehole, but it can just easily be taken that way because everybody else is so nice and doesn’t want to do anything wrong by anybody else.”
Still, it was difficult to be branded with an unsavoury reputation — especially for Fleure’s parents, in particular her late father, who died in 2016. “My dad was very sensitive, so any time there was editing that wasn’t in my favour, it broke his heart. That made it very hard for me, to see how it affected him. And I think my mum was a little hurt by some of the things from I’m A Celebrity. As supportive as they’ve been, it hurts them when somebody tries to hurt me.”
Not that she’s making the “clever editing” excuse, like plenty of reality-TV stars who end up being perceived in an unflattering light. “I don’t try to deny anything I’ve said, and I just cop it that there are going to be some cringe moments,” she says.
Given the plentiful cons of gaining notoriety via reality TV, it does beg the question: why do it in the first place? “I think it’s a really beautiful platform to look back on and see yourself from outside the square, and see how other people would interpret you,” Fleure explains. “It’s good for personal growth. It helps you look back on yourself and say, ‘Actually, I’d like to alter that or fix that,’ or, ‘No, I’m proud of that.’”
And there is always the chance you might just find the one. “I have always been of the mentality that even if you don’t find anyone on the program, you’re putting a massive ad out there for love. It’s nationwide exposure.”
Fleure’s latest foray into television is on Network Ten’s Bachelor In Paradise Australia, which brings together a selection of past contestants of The Bachelor and T he Bachelorette in an elimination-style competition. The aim of the show, which was shot in Fiji, is simple: good-looking contestants will, hopefully, form good-looking couples. Since the show debuts later this month, Fleure isn’t able to reveal if she found love or came away “empty- hearted”, but she does reveal that Bachelor In Paradise is a much more conducive environment for romance than its predecessor.
“It’s a lot less competitive,” she says. “There are more people to choose from, so it’s not as cutthroat [as The Bachelor], and I think the connections that are there surface pretty quickly. Most people don’t try to interfere with someone else’s relationship once it’s spoken for or once someone’s spoken for.” Unlike the notoriously scandalous US version, the Australian contestants “don’t want to step on anyone’s toes”.
Like other relationship-based reality programs, Bachelor In Paradise has copped its fair share of criticism and derision — all before it even goes to air. But for Fleure, participating in the show was actually a no-brainer. “I’d just come out of a relationship and I was pretty sore over it. It wasn’t a nice break-up,” she reveals. “I’d gone out on a few dates, but I hadn’t felt entirely open and I thought this could be a good opportunity to get some rebound out of the way, just feel free and single and have fun.”
She smiles. “I mean, I’d watched all these people on the telly, so I felt like I knew them already.”
Bachelor In Paradise Australia premieres 7.30pm, March 25, on Network Ten.