What really goes on behind the scenes on The Bachelor Australia
EVEN the most salacious rumours about The Bachelor pale in comparison to what really goes on behind the mansion’s walls. Contestants and insiders spill the beans.
Confidential
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EVEN the most salacious rumours about The Bachelor pale in comparison to what really goes on behind the mansion’s walls.
While the show’s creators go to great lengths to ensure the truth never gets out, sources close to The Bachelor have lifted the lid on the heavy drinking, meagre wages, prison-style tedium and manufactured romance that goes hand-in-hand with being a contestant in the reality dating series.
Melbourne contestant Emily Simms has claimed she was gagged by production company Shine Endemol after speaking out about the show.
And another bachelorette believes that posts on the official Bachelor Facebook page are removed if they challenge what’s shown on screen.
Simms controversially stormed off the show because she felt producers were manipulating her into appearing to be a princess.
The most recent evictee, Ebru Dallikavak, stuck up for Simms, saying she was an “amazing, beautiful and caring girl” and confirmed “a lot of that has not come out”.
“Unfortunately, she has been portrayed as this year’s villain,” Dallikavak said.
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Simms said the manipulation of her “character” went beyond editing.
She said she was physically prevented from joining in a group date in order to give the false impression she was a diva who spent too long preening herself.
Simms said she began drinking heavily to cope with the stress and was “blind drunk” when she stormed off the show.
Simms said alcohol flowed freely on the series, particularly on days when they filmed the infamous rose ceremonies (when women are sent home from the show) at midnight when the women were exhausted.
“We would be standing there for more than an hour, drunk and in painful shoes,” she said.
“Often, we would be hungry and just desperate to go to bed but then we’d be told to go upstairs, put our pyjamas on so they could film another scene.”
Host Osher Gunsberg denied any irresponsible drinking took place on set, saying that everyone who worked on the series took the wellbeing of the contestants “very seriously”.
He said meals were served during the cocktail parties and all the onset waiters were required to have Responsible Service of Alcohol certificates so that they, like anyone who worked behind a bar, would cut off anyone who was getting too tipsy.
“We want people to look their best on the show,” he said. “We have no interest in filming anyone who’s slurring or drunk.”
Gunsberg said a psychologist was available to all the participants for as long as they needed, even after the series had gone to air.
Although Gunsberg said he did not talk to the contestants off camera, he disputed Simms’ account of being unfairly edited on the show.
“I don’t really know Emily but I have spoken to the producers and they say the portrayal of her is pretty accurate,” he said.
“I have worked in reality TV for a long time and I know that what it does is take someone’s personality traits and magnifies them.”
However, Simms’ account of mansion life has been backed by another bachelorette from a previous season, who wished to remain anonymous.
She said she was regularly “plastered” on dates and at the rose ceremonies, adding that some contestants had to be edited out of scenes because they were slurring, swearing and falling off their chairs.
“Before they do something like send intruders in, they sat us down for three hours, feeding us drinks and not telling us what was happening,” she said.
“I blacked out once and couldn’t even remember my conversation with Blake, I was so blind.
“When you’re that drunk and have an emotional reaction your heart beats faster, so it pumps all the grog through your system and you end up really spastic, just sideways.”
From the extravagant dates to the kisses, the jaded bachelorette said everything about the show, except the women’s drunken reactions, was stage-managed by people behind the scenes.
“They are there in your face the whole time and then when it comes ready to kiss they light a million candles, turn the lights down and then all the cameramen will back off into the corners so you feel like you’re alone,” she said. “And then, once they have all the footage they need, they cut you off and say we’re done here.”
She said even the catty chats between the ladies are set up.
“It’s all totally prompted,” she laughed.
“They pick which girls they want, mic them up, get them where they want and say, right now chat about whoever is on the date and who is going home in the rose ceremony.”
Before her publicity interviews were cancelled, Simms told the Sunday Herald Sun, that being cut off from her family during the filming had left her feeling vulnerable.
She said she was only allowed one 10-minute phone call every two weeks.
The call had to be conducted on speaker phone with a producer listening in.
“At the start of each call I had to tell them not to ask me any questions about the show or what I had been doing because they would hang the phone up straight away,” she said.
“I would only be allowed one call so I would speak to my mum and then she’d have to call my best friends to tell them what I had said.
“I was only in there for a few weeks but it felt like months.”
She said TV, newspapers, magazines and radio were also banned while they were filming the show.
But a source close to the production said isolating the women was a good way to intensify the drama.
“They are all so bored,” the insider said.
“They spend all day locked inside together. Any animosity between them gets magnified in that environment. And they’re encouraged to talk about it on camera. They all have cabin fever.”
Simms said she had to move in with her parents after she finished filming because she was so “emotionally fragile”, likening the experience to being “institutionalised”.
It is understood that Simms and the other women on the show were paid roughly $90 a day to spend seven-days-a-week locked inside the Sydney house for up to three months of filming and flirting.
Sources say the bachelor is usually paid about $500 a week to date the bevy of beauties. The meagre wage reduces the pool of men interested in taking part in the show.
“It’s doubtful a serious businessman would be able to walk away from their business for three months for that sort of money,” an insider said. “It wouldn’t even cover rent.
“But no one goes on that show for the money.”
However, lowly wages are not uncommon in reality TV.
They are usually a token payment to assist contestants cover basic bills while they are filming. It’s only once a contestant graduates to a second series that they are officially considered “talent” and offered a proper wage.
Rumour has it Sam Frost has picked up quite the pay rise between her stints on The Bachelor.
In her new gig on The Bachelorette, she is said to be being paid $50,000.
There is some suggestion that it was last year’s bachelor Blake Garvey’s decision to dump Frost, and the revelation he owned a secret stripping service, that resulted in the increased scepticism of the show this year.
But an insider defended Garvey, saying he was just a pawn on the show.
Likewise, this year’s bachelor, Wood, wasn’t calling the shots on what happened with the extravagant dates or the women on the series, the insider said.
“He has no control over what happens on those dates,” the insider said.
“He doesn’t organise anything. He barely gets a say on which girls even get to go on them with him.
“Everyone knows that there’s a reason that (series two bachelor) Blake (Garvey) ended up with the second runner-up. He never wanted it to be Sam (Frost) who became the winner, but producers pressured him because it made a better story for the show.”
While admitting that Wood didn’t book the hot air balloon rides himself, Gunsberg was adamant that the show wasn’t a big fake.
“He suggests that he takes a girl on a picnic and we sprinkle a helicopter ride on it because it’s television,” he said.
So how much of the show is real, then?
“I can tell you that the emotions on this show are 100 per cent real,” Gunsberg said.
“I have had the pleasure of watching three men find real and lasting relationships on this show.
“It’s a beautiful thing.”
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