‘I’m very competitive, so I’m going there to win’: MAFS star bound for the jungle in I’m A Celebrity

Domenica from MAFS is no stranger to reality TV - now, she opens up about why she made the decision to enter the jungle.

Decked out in Gucci and surrounded by a style team focused on making her look her very best, Domenica Calarco – a standout on season nine of Married At First Sight – admits that she’s experiencing deja vu.

“It’s so cool because, back in my old life when I was a make-up artist, I was on the other side of the camera,” the reality television star says of her first Stellar fashion shoot.

“I was really nervous [about today]; I’m not going to lie.”

But nerves won’t get the better of the Sydney-based beauty influencer and Sit With Us podcast co-host.

As Calarco, 30, tells Stellar, she prides herself on seizing every opportunity no matter how far out of her comfort zone it takes her, which explains why she signed up to wed a complete stranger on MAFS the year after her first (real-life) marriage ended.

Domenica Calarco will star on the new season of I’m A Celebrity. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

‘It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

“Look, I’m not an idiot,” she says of the Nine Network series. “I’ve watched numerous seasons in the past and I know it doesn’t have a 100 per cent success rate.

“In fact, it has a ridiculously low success rate but I did it because, even if I didn’t find love, it is a social experiment where you’re filming a TV show and experiencing all kinds of weird and wonderful things. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

That eagerness to try new things has now taken Calarco to Africa to shoot the latest season of the Network 10 series I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!

Domenica Calarco says she is going to the jungle to run. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

The former MAFS star has no regrets about going on reality TV. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

While wading through a new kind of reality jungle, she hopes to raise awareness and money for The Leukaemia Foundation, the organisation she says provided information and comfort to her uncle through his battle with terminal cancer.

“I’m very competitive, so I’m going there to win,” she explains.

“I’m not going there to stuff around. I want to give back to the charity that supported my uncle and my family through so much.

“If that means I have to eat a frog or lay in a bed with 200 snakes, then I will do it happily.”

I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! premieres tonight at 7.30pm on Network 10.

Originally published as ‘I’m very competitive, so I’m going there to win’: MAFS star bound for the jungle in I’m A Celebrity