The Block co-creator Julian Cress reveals show’s biggest secrets on Mitch and Mark’s podcast

The Block’s co-creator Julian Cress has unleashed in a bombshell interview with 2021 winners Mitch and Mark on their new podcast.

This year’s Block winners Mitch and Mark today launch a new podcast – and their first guest is Block co-creator Julian Cress, giving away some big secrets about the show.

In a candid interview for the first episode of their podcast Reality Reno, Cress opens up about his best and worst moments during 17 years of the show, reveals the one thing he looks for in potential contestants, and dismisses the most common audience complaint as “bulls**t.”

Mitch and Mark’s last-minute buyer

Mitch and Mark during the weekend's auction.

Returning contestants Mitch and Mark came dead last in their original 2019 season, but turned it around for a massive win at Sunday’s grand final, pocketing almost $750,000 in profits and prize money.

And it turns out, they have one mysterious last-minute buyer to thank, who only came on board after the reveal of the dizzyingly high reserves had all the contestants worry they wouldn’t even sell their homes.

“You had a buyer, and that buyer came on board the night before the auction. A guy came to your house and sat in the front garden, on that beautiful seat under that beautiful tree, and fell in love with it,” said Cress.

Had their buyer not stepped up, eccentric multi-millionaire Danny Wallis would’ve made it four Block buys this year - and he would’ve scooped it up at a much lower price.

“Danny Wallis would’ve happily paid $3-400,000 less for it on the day, let’s be honest, but there was this guy who really wanted it and just kept bidding against him. That’s the perfect storm, right?”

The Block fans’ biggest complaint is ‘bulls**t’

Cress said the ratings prove people want drama - even if they insist they don’t.

It’s a complaint you will have seen during this explosive season more than any: Viewers on social media, complaining that The Block focuses too much on drama and not enough on renovations. We tune in to see home renos, some fans protest, not cheating scandals and ugly fights between contestants.

Cress didn’t mince his words. “It’s bulls**t. Translated, it’s ‘I don’t want to watch this big fight – I want to watch paint dry.’ It’s just not real, and the ratings reflect that.”

He’s not wrong – this season of The Block had an unusually soft start in the ratings, only picking up a few weeks in when the cheating scandal started to heat up. He did say, though, that the show tries to “strike a balance” between those two elements.

“But we’ve never just been about paint drying, we’ve always been about human drama. It used to be written in huge letters on our whiteboard in our office when we made the first series: ‘HUMAN DRAMA’. It was our reminder we weren’t just making a renovation show.”

His worst Block moment

Contestants were horrified when they first entered the Oslo. Picture: Nicole Cleary

Cress’s lowest point on the show came in the first week of Mitch and Mark’s original 2019 season, as contestants grappled with the enormous task of renovating the dilapidated Oslo hotel in St Kilda.

“I thought, this isn’t going to actually work. No-one’s going to deliver a room this week – I’ve asked too much. We didn’t do a lot of preparation before you came in because I thought, ‘It’s just going to be so dramatic! The contestants having to make a room out of THIS? It’ll be brilliant TV!’”

He said even host Scott Cam privately confessed he didn’t think anybody would be able to finish their first room. So the show did a quick pivot – the goal became just to get at least one couple to finish their first room, to prove that it was possible.

“I got through it by the skin of my teeth, then I had to stay ahead of you guys and make sure you had spaces you could deliver in a week. I learned a lot from that experience – I didn’t know where the line was until I crossed it.” He said that series “never got easier … it was intensely difficult.”

How to get on the show

Brothers Josh and Luke, this year’s only non-couple contestants.

There’s bad news if you and your best mate are among the 45,000-odd people who apply to be on The Block each year. Cress revealed that in general, he preferred not to cast non-“intimate” partners.

“We haven’t had many examples of mates, or friends who don’t live together but they love catching up on the weekends so they thought they’d go on The Block. I don’t think they have what it takes to get through it – I think, for a team to get through it, they need to be a couple and they need to have been a couple for some time.

He said there had been examples of couples who had gone on the show after being together just a few years – “immediately after finishing, they split. The Block is too much pressure for a relationship that young.”

Cress said he was looking for “people who know each other well enough that they can just look at each other and know that they’ll find a way through it; it’s going to be OK”.