‘MAFS’ Bosses Spill Tea About Casting Process & The Drama You Don’t Get To See On-Screen

The countdown is on for the new season of Married At First Sight (just four days, in fact) and here comes the tea, mates.

Speaking to The Brisbane Times, MAFS relationship expert John Aiken revealed they always get way more women applying than blokes.

“Men are the hard ones to get,” he said, adding that out of 15,000 applications for the last season, a whopping 80 per cent were women.

“Other [MAFS] production teams [across the world] say the same thing,” he continued.

“When you’re on this show for 10 weeks for this experiment, basically you’re going to be exposed, you’re going to have everything essentially come out.”

And as for which punters they pick to join the show, Endemol Shine Australia’s executive producer Tara McWilliams insists they don’t deliberately choose the spiciest folks.

“I wish I could take full credit, say I’m the casting genius behind this show and all my plans came to fruition, but that is not the case,” she said.

But she does agree that nowadays, a large portion of people who sign up to the show don’t do it “for the right reasons”.

“It’s not the main driver for everyone,” she says. “But even if people are coming on to increase their profile, or to get Instagram followers, or to get some sort of public profile out of this, I genuinely believe that everyone who comes on hopes they are matched with someone they like and potentially could have a relationship with.”

“I think the experience is probably the main driver now,” she adds. “Being on television, being part of the experiment and whatever that brings. I don’t think it’s so black and white as either love or fame.”

There have been rumours banging around that this season will be much tamer than last but McWilliams refutes this, telling Sydney Morning Herald she’s felt no pressure from Nine to tone down the show.

“And thank God,” she adds. “If we had to I think it would be very difficult and quite frustrating. By the nature of it I think it’s always going to be quite unpredictable and controversial at times.”

Channel Nine’s Programming Director Hamish Turner, however, insisted it would be a balance of love and drama.

He told TV Tonight: “There will be drama, there is no doubt and we’re not afraid of that.”

“But the beginning of the show is definitely people looking for love and that should absolutely be the driving force behind it” he added.

Nine’s head of content, Adrian Swift, added: “there is a certain amount of addressing last year. You can’t sanitise it too much [but] I think the mood of the nation has changed a little bit with the bushfires. I think people need a little more love because of all the travails we’ve been through over the last few months.”

Swift went on to discuss the struggle of making the show hella spicy but also family friendly.

“On the one side of the equation we’ve got this amazing drama happening,” he said.

“On the other side, it’s ‘hold on a second; for this to be a massive hit we’ve got to get mothers, teenage daughters and old people to watch – and they will find a lot of this shocking’. That was the gymnastics we went through pretty much every day last season.”

You’ll never believe it, but apparently some of the worst of the participants’ behaviour never went to air, which, after seeing last season, I find rather hard to believe.

Swift also said he found some moments in previous seasons “almost impossible” to watch.

“Do you ever want to make TV that people can’t watch? No, you do not,” he says. “It was one of the hardest shows to make that I’ve ever been involved in.”

Although the show has been a ratings juggernaut, an executive producer at Endemol Shine Australia admitted to Sydney Morning Herald that the number of successful pairings is “probably still on one hand.”

Meanwhile we’ve already been introduced to the men and women who’ll be walking down the aisle on Monday night, including returning bride Elizabeth Sobinoff.

Speaking to Sydney Morning Herald, Sobinoff said that despite the shitstorm that transpired last year with her groom Sam Ball, she actually a, erm, ball on the show.

“Contrary to what people might believe I actually enjoyed the experience last year,” she said.

She’s hoping for a luckier season and believe me, we’re all pulling for her.

“I hope I can find someone that I can have a full-on relationship with,” Sobinoff says. “I’ve seen it work. It worked last year [with Jules and Cam, who married for real last November]. I’ve seen how people can connect through the experiment and I want that.”

MAFS returns to Nine on Monday at 7:30pm.

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