Hold onto your wigs Married At First Sight stans, because former contestant Beck Zemek has decided to spill some 100-pack Bushells bulk tea on the behind the scenes workings of the show. In particular, she divulged all the secrets around how dinner parties and commitment ceremonies work. Turns out everything you see is a lot more puppeteered than you would have imagined, but then again, that’s reality TV babey.
Appearing on the So Dramatic! podcast, Beck Zemek dropped a whole series of bombshells about what contestants are required to do behind the scenes during dinner parties, and let us in on other producer-influenced shenanigans.
Here are seven (yes, seven) pots of tea that Beck decided to spill during the interview.
1. Contestants know all the goss before the dinner parties
According to Beck Zemek, there’s so much downtime before MAFS dinner parties that everyone just gossips with each other, so by the time the dinner party is filmed nobody is exactly surprised by any revelations.
“You need to remember going into the dinner parties, they’re pretending that they don’t know things that have happened,” said Beck.
“We all live on the same floor. We all talk to each other. We’re all sitting [together] ten minutes before we go into the pre-party whispering to each other.
“It’s not as if we have never seen each other and we don’t know what’s going on.”
She also revealed that during commitment ceremonies, the couples see everything that’s going on, which we could very obviously assume previously, but it’s still spicy to have it extra confirmed.
2. The experts don’t watch the dinner parties live
This one is a little bit obvi for anyone who has a keen eye, but the MAFS experts watch the best bits of the dinner parties as selected by producers, and they do so way after the event is done. It’d be way too chaotic to keep up with that shit as it happens.
“They will actually watch a little TV and react to certain things,” Beck said.
“So, if they need more, I guess more information on something that’s going on in the storyline, they will then sit there and actually put the pieces together.”
Smart stuff.
3. Commitment ceremonies are fkn long
According to Beck Zemek, MAFS commitment ceremonies are actually way longer than we’re led to believe.
She also said that apparently, the ceremonies kick off at 12pm, and each couple is allotted a full 40mins on the couch with the experts. Talk about commitment.
“It’s a long day. Literally, by the time you’re sitting there waiting for that couch, you don’t care anymore, you just want your bed,” said Beck.
4. More commitment ceremony tea
“They don’t have cameras on everyone at all times,” said Beck.
“So, they’ve got good six hours of everyone’s facial expressions. What they’ll do is, they’ll find those facial expressions in the six hours that they will use.”
“By half time, everyone’s falling asleep. They’ll call everyone to the couch without actually doing the commitment ceremony part and then you actually don’t know what audio is going in after that.”
Sounds like some grade-A producer fuckery to me.
5. The experts are fed instructions by producers during the ceremony
According to Beck Zemek, the MAFS producers know what makes the spiciest drama, and so they tell the experts (via an earpiece) to hone in on things the contestants say if they think a further response will produce maximum spice.
“When you are on the couch, you can actually be in the moment, like in the heat of a discussion and if something really relevant to the storyline gets said, the experts will actually cut you off,” said Beck.
“It’s only because that’s exactly what they need for the storyline. The experts are the actors in the entire production.
“They’re leading the way. They’re saying, what’s right and wrong and they’re like God on the show.
“You’d have to know what’s going on with each couple to be able to even sit there on the couch confidently and quiz people.”
But, it’s impossible for them to know all the ins and outs all the time, thus the earpieces.
6. Contestants have to drive to MAFS dinner parties with no aircon
Apparently, aircon stuffs up with the contestants’ mics while they’re driving to the parties, so it has to stay off. Yes, this means they drive in the sweltering fkn heat.
“What people don’t see is that aircon messes with your microphone, so you actually have to sit in the hot car and drive around until they get enough shots and answer some questions before you actually get to the warehouse,” said Beck.
7. Stay and leave card drama
“You have to write a fake leave or stay so they can get different angles,” said Beck.
“So, you literally fake write three times before you actually write what you’re going to write.”
On top of this, Beck Zemek reckons that Texan hammerhead Andrew Davis from this year’s MAFS was told by producers to cross out leave and write stay for a dramatic moment on-screen.
“And that would have literally just been a few conversations around how you’re [Andrew] going to be maybe portrayed or that you’re going to have to stay anyway,” she said.
“The producers changed it for him and obviously, that’s why he walked out.”
Maximum. Fkn. Spice.
