MAFS UK secrets and scandals from fake weddings and booze smuggling to sly phone calls
Reality TV favourite Married At First Sight has returned to our screens with a bang, with the usual dose of jaw-dropping drama, side-eyed cheekiness, heart-warming speeches, an extraordinary set of fake teeth and seemingly, a lot more chaos to come.
And as OK! have been glued to the most dramatic series yet, we're revealing all the gossip from the much-loved E4 dating shows, from sly phone calls to smuggling booze.. Here we take a look back at some of the sneaky tricks that viewers might not have noticed over the years...
The weddings
No need for divorces here! While the nuptials used to be legally binding, it changed last year to align with the Australian format – so the brides and grooms aren’t technically married. As authentic as the weddings may seem, producers use some creative licence to make sure they get the best scenes.
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A source told us, “They have to refilm scenes if something’s missed because of noise – for example, if something’s said and there is a problem with the mic or they haven’t got the camera on that person.”
Former groom Bob Voysey recently revealed he had to re-film his wedding kiss with bride Megan Wolfe “five or six times”. He said, “I remember Megan going, ‘Guys, this is getting a bit awkward now. I’ve never even kissed someone in front of my family before, and now I’ve just done it five f***ing times with a stranger.’”
The dinner parties
The infamous dinner parties feature some of the most explosive and shocking scenes we see on the series, like when Kwame Badu failed to pour new wife Kasia a drink, but in order to keep things from getting too wild, producers also limit alcohol consumption for the stars.
“There’s a cap on how much they’re allowed to drink at the dinner parties,” our source says. However, Bob recently revealed cast would sneakily bring in their own beverages for dinner party pre-drinks.
“They put you in your little holding rooms before the dinner, and we’re all sat chatting,” he says. “Everyone was sneaking bottles of wine, vodka in and getting smashed in their rooms. It was brilliant.” That explains a lot!
While the dinner party episodes we see on screen last just over an hour, our source adds that filming can actually take a full day. “What you see is a small portion of the actual filming. It can go on for up to eight hours.”
The honeymoons
The honeymoons give the newlyweds a chance to really get to know each other, some time for bonding and a few awkward moments - remember Jenna and Zoe and Vegangate?
But a lot of what goes on, we don’t necessarily see on screen, a source tells us. “They don’t film a lot of the honeymoon, so the couples have a lot of down time,” they said. “The majority of them get intimate on honeymoon when the cameras aren’t around.”
And while contact with the outside world is banned, the stars are given production phones which aren’t always used for their proper means.
“Quite a lot of them sneakily speak to their friends on the production phones via video calls, even though it’s against the rules,” our source added. Naughty!
Living Together
Once the couples have returned from honeymoon, they get put into “various isolation periods” until filming picks back up. “A lot of the cast members sneak into each other’s rooms,” our source revealed. “The couples all live in an apartment block - last year it was Brighton - but they’re not allowed to see the other couples.”
As we’ve seen with April Banbury and George Roberts in that hot tub incident, things can become stressful and heated during the whirlwind romances.
And former MAFS star Morag Crichton says they have professional therapists to lean on. “We always had a psychiatrist or a therapist, or somebody to talk to,” she said. “Sometimes, you felt that they really were leaning towards the show, like they were paid for by a show as opposed to being somebody completely separate.”