I was on Married at First Sight & there’s a secret room during the dinner parties you don’t see – I always left starving
TENSIONS almost always boil over at a Married at First Sight dinner party - and so far this series has been no exception.
Warring couple Porscha and Terrence refused to walk in together for the first one, and this week Laura was left raging after Luke called her a “gold digger”.
Former contestant Amy Christophers, who appeared on the 2021 series, says half the reason the MAFS cast get so pent up is they’re left starving from the “f*****g awful” food.
That, and the fact they’ve been filming since 8:30am and sometimes don’t finish until 3am.
She also reveals there are secret rooms where the cast are held before the mixer - to ensure they don’t speak to other couples beforehand - and before the dinner, to help them “sober up”.
Amy explains: “You’ll be sat waiting in a room, and then they move you out of it, and into a different room.
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“And slowly, you get closer and closer to the party - and you’re staggered out so you don’t see the other couples before you walk in, and you have no idea what order you’re going in.”
During the mixer, as couples start chatting, they’re allowed to drink alcohol - and Amy says there’s no limit.
But afterwards she claims they have to go back to their holding rooms to “basically sober up” while the producers set up the dinner party scene.
“Sometimes that’d be an hour, sometimes it'd be two hours,” she recalls.
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Amy - who is dairy and gluten-free - says while the food looks delicious on camera, in reality it was always cold and in her case, inedible.
She explains: “The dinner party usually went on ‘til 3am. They were long days and I didn’t eat.
“The food was f*****g awful, so I'd be drinking but also starving, and everybody's eating around me.
“The food was always cold as well, because it had been sat out.
“Some people were smacking it in their mouth, but it wasn't for me. I think there was only one dinner party where I actually enjoyed the food and I think that was near the end.”
It actually got to a point where Amy would cook vegan chilli con carne for herself and her co-star Marilyse Corrigan, who also wasn’t eating.
“We'd eat that in between the mixer and going into the dinner party, because the food was so bad,” she says.
She adds that there’s a lot of waiting around on the day: “You have to be up at 8.30am to do the shots driving around in your car.
“Then you go off and do voxes [talking to camera], being asked 'How do you feel about the dinner party tonight?'
“And they have to do that with everybody.”
Fake friendships
When it kicks off at a dinner party and someone storms out in tears - like Porscha did last week - one of the contestants usually follows.
But Amy says the person who consoles them is usually picked by the production team, regardless of whether they’re actually friends.
“They would have just picked someone and been like, 'You two got on at the hen party',” she says.
“Because they want to find out what's going on in that couple, they'll ask somebody to go and take somebody for a chat.
“During my series they would choose really random people. They would just get people that weren't friends to go and talk.
We'd eat that in between the mixer and going into the dinner party, because the food was so bad
Amy Christophers
“I think they got Marilyse to go and talk to Megan about something, and I thought, ‘That's a bit weird, I don't think they've even said three words to each other'.
“Sometimes it doesn't make sense who they get to talk, but I suppose that way you get a more open chat.
“That person probably wouldn't know much about what’s going on in their couple, so it would be a very natural conversation.
“If someone's close to you, you might have already messaged them and been like, ‘Oh my God he's doing this, he's doing that,’ so they'd already know about it and then it wouldn't come across as a genuine chat."
'Clutching at straws'
Amy says the fact the experts have visited some couples, like Rosaline and Thomas, in their flats already to offer guidance hints that they’re concerned about people choosing to leave early on in the process.
“That never happened during ours,” she says. “We only saw the experts at the commitment ceremonies, that was it.
“They're s******g themselves. They're like 'F***, all these people want to leave because they haven't got their person.'
“They're clutching at straws trying to help, like 'We don't even have the intruder couples coming in yet so we need to somehow make this work.'
“But the whole nation knows that Rosaline and Thomas aren't going to work out - no experts can make that work.
“It's so weird, it's like wow, they're really getting them to beg them to stay, basically.
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“I do feel really bad for them in their situation. I just don't know what the experts were thinking. They’re completely different people.”
Married at First Sight continues tonight at 9pm on E4.
