‘Terrifying:’ Block star slams Nine after exit

Block contestant Paige has made a series of shocking claims about her experience on the show and what led to decision to quit.

The Block contestant Paige has opened up about her exit in a series of videos on TikTok, where she also made some allegations about her time on the show.

The Perth couple’s decision to leave came after weeks of escalating tension between them, culminating in a late-night fight that saw one of The Block’s executive producers intervene to tell them they needed to make a decision about their future on the show.

After a weekend meeting with a health professional Jesse and Paige rose on Monday morning and gathered the rest of the teams to share some big news: They’d decided to quit the show, effective immediately.

Following the couple’s exit, Paige has taken to TikTok to discuss, in-depth, what led to the pair’s decision to quit.

She said things began to “spiral” for her after the show’s crew began “coming into rooms in the morning” to film “without consent”.

Morning wake up scenes have been a fixture on the show for each of its 20 seasons.

“Without prior briefing, no warning and absolutely no consent, the crew start coming into our rooms in the morning to film us while we’re sleeping,” she alleged.

The pair left the show after tensions reached boiling point. Picture: Nine.

She said this was troubling for her due to a “past background with sexual assault”.

Paige made no suggestion that Nine were aware of her personal history.

She went on to share that she’s “not a great sleeper” and often experiences sleep paralysis where she wakes up “really confused”.

As a result of filming in the mornings, she said she began developing “really bad PTSD symptoms” during the third week of filming.

“You wake up in your bedroom, it’s pitch black, and you have three black figures, two or three figures standing over your bed, and it’s terrifying. And that’s how you wake up,” she explained.

Paige struggled on the show and has said that she began to "spiral". Picture: Nine

“I’d be frozen in my bed, I would be paralysed, and I would be having like, no joke — and I feel like really ashamed of this for some reason — I would have full-on hallucinations.

“I started to spiral very quickly from these mornings because some of the times Jesse wasn’t even in bed with me and I was just alone. So most mornings in week three, I was trying to fight off big episodes of derealisation, lots of confusion, anxiety, and the worst of all was my level of paranoia and all these sorts of scenarios that were playing in my head.”

She shared that she began to feel “cuckoo” and was filled with feelings of paranoia and anxiety daily.

Paige made a series of allegations on TikTok following her exit from the show. Picture: Nine.

“I really tried to push all my mental health to the side, but anything was setting me off. Any little thing — I was nervous, anxious, paranoid all day, but I really did try my hardest to be okay,” she continued.

“I had these conversations with Jesse, he told a producer what I was going through, and then the morning visits stopped. By the time the morning visits stopped, it was just, sadly, a little too late for me. I was off the deep end and drowning.”

Paige then went on to claim that producers cut different things she was saying together to weave a narrative that made her look “crazy”.

“They were just blatantly cutting conversations to make me look crazy. So we were quite frustrated with the first two weeks of how we were depicted,” she continues. “We were just sitting there like, ‘What?’.”

Nine said its takes the wellbeing of contestants "extremely seriously". Picture: Nine.

“They did that by literally putting full sentences in my mouth, and that’s what we like to call Frankenbites,” she alleged. “They were chopping bits and bobs from everywhere and just smooshing them together so everything was in the context that they wanted, but it was glaringly obvious that things weren’t matching up.”

Paige ended her series of videos by saying that she feels for the past contestants who have also been affected by the show.

She also claimed that some of the show’s young, female crew members are “sick of the boys club” culture on the show.

“The Block is over to me,” said Paige. “All I want to do now is implore the network that when this show continues, there needs to be serious reform on how you prepare contestants.”

In a statement to news.com.au, Nine insisted that it takes the mental health of its contestants “extremely seriously”.

“Nine and Cavalier Television takes its obligations in respect to the health and wellbeing of the participants of this program extremely seriously,” said the broadcaster. “Nine has a service for all participants should they like or need individual and confidential psychological support. “This service gives participants access to clinicians who have been specifically engaged to support those involved in the program in relation to their experiences. This service is available to all participants during filming, broadcast and once the program has ended for as long as they need it, it does not end.”

Originally published as ‘Terrifying:’ Block star slams Nine after exit