Gary Mehigan has opened up about his exit from Masterchef, and is sticking firmly to the line that he and his fellow judges did not demand a hefty pay raise prior to their shock departure.
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In an interview with Fairfax, the chef claimed that there is no truth to the “greedy judges” rumour that he, George Calombaris and Matt Preston were chasing a big pay bump.
Instead, he says that negotiations stalled because Channel 10 wanted to sign them all the way through 2020, whereas they wanted to finish earlier in the year, to go do other things.
What things exactly? According to Gary Mehigan, the three took a joint overseas food trip during the off-season, and enjoyed hanging out so much that they wanted to work together more.
This led to the idea to form a production company, GaryGeorge&Matt, which would potentially spawn an empire of “books, podcasts, cooking festivals [and] a new TV series.”
Apparently though, 10 wouldn’t let them go early, and Mehigan said that sticking around until the end of 2020 would have “would have limited our ability to do other things.”
He continued:
“All the financial terms had been agreed; it was purely about the length of the new contract. We wanted to keep making MasterChef, but we needed space to stretch our legs and do our own thing.”
He said that he found out he’d been fired when Calombaris called him on the way home from a shopping trip, and he’s mainly sad to have left the show without saying goodbye:
“We’d always imagined we’d farewell our viewers and pass the baton to three younger and possibly brighter stars … there was a grieving process; a sense of loss, a sense of anger and some tears.”
