Who do you believe? TV stars speak out
Serious investigations have exploded around Channel 9 again. As stars speak out to James Weir, who’s telling the truth — and what’s the price that makes it all worth it?
Just weeks after slamming production for her treatment on Married At First Sight, Jacqui Burfoot was in a nightclub accepting a $30,000 diamond ring (provided by a brand sponsor) from co-star Clint Rice and revelling in the cheers of fans who’d watched her unravelling on the reality TV program.
“This is what I wanted,” she told news.com.au after she fell to the sticky nightclub floor on Sunday.
“We’re so happy for you,” a 20-something woman shrieked as she grabbed the hand of Burfoot, who had stolen focus as a baffling reality TV villain on this year’s series of the controversial Channel 9 series, which has pulled in up to three million viewers per episode. “We support you!”
The 30-year-old consultant-model-designer-whatever was basking in the glory. It wasn’t the way she thought it would unfold. But she’d gotten it anyway. Whatever it was.
“It has been tough,” she lamented of the experience, when asked about it by Jackson Garlick – the heir to the Garlo’s Pies fortune, who was also a reality television contestant on The Bachelor.
They were standing in a Sydney nightclub for a viewing of the MAFS semi-final episode, which had just been eclipsed by the surprise real-life marriage proposal. Burwood’s former on-screen husband Ryan Donnelly had, on national television, just called her a “pathological liar”.
Burfoot told Garlick of the AVO dramas she’s experiencing with Donnelly. It’s one of many hiccups brought on by the show, that she recently told media had left her “mentally distressed”.
Burfoot claimed on social media in March that she had “packed her bags” and tried to leave halfway through the experiment, but was thwarted by producers.
Burfoot also said viewers had been “fed a highly edited story” and that she “couldn’t sit back and support deceptive stories”.
The irate claims were similar to the flurry of gripes that have been made by many disgruntled contestants since Married At First Sight first premiered 11 years ago.
Several production sources told news.com.au both Nine and Endemol Shine Australia (the production company behind MAFS) are fatigued with the annual bout of contestants blaming producers when things don’t go their way.
Each season, there’s pearl-clutching, questions over the show’s future and apparently-serious action (SafeWork NSW launched inquiries into the production last month. Meanwhile, TV watchdog the Australian Communications Media Authority confirmed it had received various complaints from viewers including allegations that the broadcasts included issues such as domestic violence, coercive control and inappropriate sexual content.) Nothing sticks. Next year's series is already in pre-production.
But amid the high of becoming engaged to Rice, a wealthy entrepreneur, in front of a crowd of screaming fans at a frenzied party, Burfoot watered down her own damning allegations.
“We’re happy we found each other. We’d do it again for each other,” she said, before adding, “ … We’ve got a few businesses we’re working on.”
Meanwhile, Rice was telling a fawning groupie about how he’d sold his e-comm business and was working with Burfoot to scale up her fledgling jewellery line – seemingly capitalising on the new-found spotlight that had already led to a spike in new followers for the brand’s social media channels.
Standing in the same group, their co-star Dave Hand – who was presented as one half of a love story on MAFS but had since split from his on-screen wife Jamie Marinos – was flirting with young blonde fans in miniskirts, who’d travelled to the venue to meet-and-greet-and-sip.
“Big Dick Dave,” said one petite lady, sporting Snuffleupagus eyelashes and a Glassons top.
Did Dave call himself that?
“It’s kind of just … known?” she said. “He’s got a big dog.”
Big dog?
“Well, literally a big dog. But he’s also got a big dick.”
Suddenly, Dave ripped his shirt off to dance with the ladies, while scream-singing the lyrics to a rap song about “fat ass”. Squeals! Neon lights flickered. Trays of Nando’s chicken circulated.
This is the luxury that comes with appearing on reality TV. Particularly, Married At First Sight.
It’s all heaven. Until you’re deported to hell.
THAT’S SHOWBIZ, BABY!
“Absolute evil,” Olivia Frazer said of the production that turned her into one of the biggest villains in Australian reality TV history.
She glanced over at this year’s cast who were lapping up the adoration on the dancefloor.
“I’m still recovering. It’s just really hard … Nobody signs up to MAFS expecting the risk of being perceived as a criminal by the entire country. And that’s exactly what MAFS did to me.”
She blamed Endemol Shine Australia (ESA) – the production company behind the series – and Nine for failing their duty of care.
“Sometimes the more outrageous contestants aren’t the ones you expect to be crazy and it’s discovered as its going on,” said one former executive who worked closely with the production. “And they’re the ones where mistakes can get made because the sensitivities haven’t been anticipated and producers haven’t been able to mitigate around them.”
Nearby, Billy Belcher, a contestant on this year’s series who was being swarmed by selfie-snapping ladies, said he didn’t believe in blaming the edit.
“This experiment just holds a mirror up to yourself and, if you’re not happy with that, then you’re going to be unhappy with your edit,” he said.
Frazer, a former teacher, said she was unemployable after her appearance on the show in 2022. Just to afford rent, she said she has to sell X-rated content on OnlyFans.
“I came off the show and nobody wanted to do brand deals with the villain," she said. "All the benefits of being on the show and influencing and shit like that, I had no taste of that.”
But would that have made it all worth it?
“That’s showbiz, baby!” Dave Hand yelled over the DJ remix about the MAFS experience, which was compared to a “prison” by former contestant Dave Cannon in a 2020 interview.
“It’s stressful but I wouldn’t say it’s unhealthy. It’s like an SAS course — mentally draining. I never regretted going on. I guess the hardest part is the aftermath because it’s all left to the unknown.”
He didn’t find love but he doesn't seem upset about it. Now he wants to start a podcast.
While Frazer didn’t get the opportunity to launch podcasts or acquire brand deals, she did, however, get a taste of the kind of cash that can only come from having a profile.
After launching her OnlyFans in May 2022, she shattered her prior teacher wage by profiting $10,000 in her first 12 hours.
It’s clear though, at least for Frazer, the momentary highs haven’t been worth the pain.
While Frazer, who said she was suicidal after her negative portrayal, levels the blame at production, many argued she was failing to take accountability for her portrayal on the series, in which she was accused of sl*t-shaming co-star Domenica Calarco.
While sources say it’s just a case of sour grapes, Frazer, for her part, argues she was sold the dream by production during filming, saying ESA exec Tara McWilliams – the mastermind responsible for supercharging the Aussie MAFS franchise into a global juggernaut – assured her that she and on-screen husband Jackson Lonie would be “the next Jules and Cam”, a reference to the show’s 2017 fairy tale couple who went on to start a family, become social media stars and launch a shapewear business.
NO ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF
“Sometimes you’ve got to hustle in life to get what you want,” Jules Robinson (one half of the “Jules and Cam” success story) said a few days earlier about the expectations some contestants have when going on reality TV to find love along with a life overhaul.
“I think it’s very clear — you can tell who’s on there for love and who’s going on there because they see it as an opportunity.”
She was standing inside a Woolloomooloo bar to celebrate the new-season launch for Love Triangle, another reality dating show spearheaded by McWilliams and her team of producers.
McWilliams – sporting her trademark spectacles and dead-straight hair – dodged the spotlight, bypassed the red carpet and slipped inside the industrial warehouse, where she loomed over a cast of former contestants whose lives she has been an omnipresent and instrumental force in.
The TV exec and her producers (or, “minions” as Olivia Frazer called them) maintains a rule not to talk to the press or comment on the scandals generated by her programs.
“I’ve always been very grateful for Tara,” Robinson said. “She was always there for me. I think she’s quite fair, really, with how people are portrayed.”
Mike Gunner is a man who wasn’t portrayed well during his 2019 appearance on MAFS. Not only was the Gold Coast photographer painted as the villain, he was also mocked online for his tattooed hairline – a cosmetic treatment where his bald scalp was clinically inked to look as if it had natural hair growth. But the negative experience hasn’t stopped him from putting his life back in the hands of McWilliams, who has cast him again as a contestant on the new series of Love Triangle.
“It’s a lottery, these shows,” Gunner said at the premiere. “I was made to look like a jerk. There’s every chance you could come out looking like a villain.”
He said he’s a “big fan” of TV honcho McWilliams and her troupe of producers, who he describes as “honest” and “not malicious”.
“If you don’t like what you see, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself,” he said.
He didn’t find love on MAFS and was “castigated by society for being a jerk”. He tried to capitalise on the controversy by starting a now-defunct podcast.
His goal for re-entering the reality TV universe? To maybe meet someone. But he’s also got other priorities.
“I’m actually doing a feature film that I wrote,” he said.
Facebook: @hellojamesweir
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