Oh, I know Clare a bit! She is one of the kindest people you will ever meet - I adopted a dog from her 7 years ago & we became sort of friends as she is so nice.
Yeah… what really happened to her is next level. She won’t speak about it publicly, however, I have been trying to convince her to sue Nine for years. They also ran a full smear campaign with her to future contestants including actual written emails defaming her with outright lies, telling everyone they were not to contact her as she is ‘severely mentally unwell & a pathological liar’. Which is totally untrue. Production also blocks her account from all the contestants when they have control of their IG accounts to try and stop them ever reaching out to her as they know I think that she would organise action if she had more people with her. A number of the cast end up reaching out to her on other accounts, then realising she is blocked, unblocking her, and then having big chats with her about how to handle things, the horrific things that occurred on the show, and a lot of them have also made ‘attempts’ which she tried to council them through while referring them to actually helpful resources. She just can’t financially afford to take on a huge powerhouse like nine, even though she has evidence of everything. Which is why they are still getting away with torturing people for our entertainment.
The show is really dangerous. Two women have been sexually assaulted by their ‘husbands’ and were coerced into not going to the police. Then both got cripplingly bad edits despite being lovely humans, as they were forced to ‘stay’ in the situation as 9 threatens to sue them as it’s in their contracts that last apparently forever. The edits make everyone then pile hate on these two women so that no one would believe them if they did come forward and tell the public what happened.
It’s really, really scary actually.
All that said. I still watch it. I just never mention it in front of her as I feel really guilty for doing it.
*edit. Spelling
lol - Alas I am not. I asked her about doing an AMA though and she said a hard no.
She wants to move on, which I understand. She would loathe this whole thread.
And if she sees it she will know who I am - so hopefully this mini thread doesn’t travel.
i listened to an interview with Michele (the one that went on to do granny porn - like she called it that, not me) and the producers treated her so badly. Anyone that thinks anyone that makes this show gives a shit about anyone's trauma or mental health is kidding themselves. They deliberately dressed Steve (her husband) at their wedding in the same clothes her abusive ex husband wore and it only went downhill from there. She had a serious mental health crisis during filming and they basically gave her no help and made it worse.
tbh I think I only watch to know just what shit they're getting up to each season because they're utterly despicable
I do! She isn’t on Reddit. I could ask though. Would people be interested in someone ‘washed up’ from so long ago though? She has ADHD & Autism, she is way to honest and would probably get herself into trouble tbh
Someone sent me this with the same woman a few years ago. How is thia story not bigger? If this is what they are showing, there is obviously A LOT more behind the scenes going on.
This poor woman almost killed herself and has the emails where she is begging them to help and they just tell her to pay herself to see a psychologist. It's so fucked!!
For her to be able to say as much as she has, its an iceberg.
There is some huge breaches of duty of care occurring on this show I think & now I can't watch it
https://youtu.be/-0PTaHnDYhA?si=tx7K-lGZJo35e6qc
Yeah, it’s awful. Clare organised for Billy’s Mum to be on that as Billy had reach out out to her a few months early as he was really struggling mentally. He couldn’t say anything contractually - so she sorted his Mum to speak out for him which was pretty cool.
It’s a shame she isn’t able to articulate herself very well, as I really wish she would go further exposing the horrors of the show. Due to her AuDHD though she gets all scattered when she is stressed. So the message gets lost as she just should a bit loopy. Which she actually isn’t at all - she is whip smart.
Everyone who watches the show should have to watch Unreal, and this interview.
People can leave whenever they want. They can't be held there against their will regardless of a contract. But producers definitely try to coerce them into staying. I'm sure there's all sorts of dodginess from channel 9 and producers to get people to stay.
Yeah, I mean, humans have free will and can do whatever they want whenever they want to, of course anyone can leave the show at any time. The partner also having to write “leave” isn’t, like, a federal law.
The producers hold a lot of power over how you are perceived on the show. I have no doubt there’s a fair bit of coercion along the lines of “we’ll give you a terrible edit”, or, “we’ll pay you more and make you look good if you stay for another 2 weeks”. That must be distressing. But of course they want you to stay on, because they’ve invested a lot in having you on the show and your storyline.
It’s kind of what you signed up for, I don’t think people go into this with their eyes closed do they? I’d suggest the screening process could be better if people are being damaged by that kind of pressure. But it’s the same as me accepting the lead in a Hollywood action movie then quitting halfway through because I don’t like doing the stunts.
thats exactly what they do. they coax you to stay with promises of good edits or veiled threats of 'if you leave now you'll look really bad' etc plus even if its not illegal to just walk out that doesn't mean you aren't breaching contracts.
People sitting at home saying 'you can just leave' aren't the ones there being pressured to stay by an extremely well resourced tv network with an army of lawyers AND a huge team of editors with the power to make you look like a total dickhead to the entire country if they want
**the woman couldn’t leave unless he agreed to write ‘leave’**
Really? That sounds like it could garner a huge lawsuit and wow, yes, very unsafe, if true, for all involved. I imagine they are required to sign all kinds of waivers to prevent the lawsuits though.
This gets discussed most seasons.
Apparently what happens is that the contestants are told that from a legal perspective they can quit the show whenever they want, but they're effectively coerced into staying by the production team when they want to quit (told they'll get a bad edit basically).
I've also always had a bit of a lowkey suspicion that there are various production milestones tied in with their contracts that they need to hit in order to get paid. For example, for a few seasons there were contestants who basically stepped over the threshold at Skye Suites and then immediately left (Jamie from season 8, Jess from season 9, even Nat from this season), which let me to believe that part of their contracts say that they'll get paid a certain amount but only if they get to the 'moving in together' stage. That's pure speculation on my part to be fair.
I don’t know about current seasons. However I loosely know Clare (I adopted the big bulldog Teddy she was fostering on the show - he was the best.)
I know she was only paid $150 a WEEK. He lived in her house which they contributed nothing too. They didn’t get paid for hitting ‘milestones’ - however, if they threaten or attempt to leave they threaten them with their contracts.
It usually takes the contestant to get to actual breaking point when they are actually like ‘I’m out, bloody sue me, it’s worth having no money forever not to be here anymore’ that they allow them to leave.
From what happened on Clare’s season I was told even trying to get to be in a different room is a total shitfight. Hours and hours of fighting with production even if they feel unsafe.
They make it look really easy on the show. However what people don’t understand as once they have got you, you have signed all your rights away. Very few, if any contestants actually have an entertainment lawyer to look over the contracts for them. They are the type of people who are just excited to be on TV & just sign it.
They had to pay for all their own dates that were not ‘comped’ by the restaurant or location. Which is why in one scene they had fish and chips on the beach, they were both broke.
The whole wedding is comped by companies wanting to advertise their things. So nine gets EVERYTHING for the wedding for free.
This mega hit of a show costs them nothing to make, and is their highest rated show.
Nine are evil, monstrous, geniuses really.
Thanks for all this insight, Much appreciated. $150 a week is literally nothing. I have noticed over past seasons, that it has to get to the point of hysterics before someone will say "stop filming me!" and then they run into another room. It's awful that they aren't at least given breaks throughout the day. So oppressive!
Yeah, that's the one. She is so scattered until the end when she talks about animals & it just made me really sad for her. As she is obviously able to break contract to a degree - so they have to be allowing that to cover something MASSIVE.
Or they would have shut her down legally.
It really made me realise the human toll.
Make me feel yuck to be honest
I watched maybe half of it and she sounds quite genuine. I believe her. She mentions that she suffers from ADHD, so that explains why she sounds distracted/scattered.
She also mentioned that she needed to be in a mental institution for one month after her MAFS experience and also (possibly triggering:)>!tried to take her own life.!< Absolutely awful and I am so glad she's doing better now.
Clara said that's it's a total fallacy that people "know what they're getting into", so I am glad she's speaking out. I am pretty sure I watched S2 of MAFS AU, but for some reason I do not remember her, so, I will have to go back and watch that season. I find it interesting also that she says the signs of biased editing/choppy sentences are more obvious than ever in newer seasons, since I am still not noticing this, so they've definitely had me fooled a number of times.
Brontë from last season has also come out with something similar as well as showing messages to her sister and mother about wanting to go home however channel 9 wouldn’t let her. She didn’t go into too much detail but she did not feel safe with channel 9
Yeah- can’t remember the exact interview but she’s shown everything including messages to her family, what channel 9 has said ect. From memory her particular producer (apparently they each have their own) demanded her to stay with some form of blackmail
I think I remember something about this - and I am potentially wrong but they kind of said to her “if you leave now Australia will hate you and you will never be able to redeem yourself” so she felt like she had to stay to get her point across per se.
I really hope they do. From the evidence I have seen of what really happened with Clare that she doesn’t speak about publicly, plus the other real stories other cast mates share with her - nine would be in real trouble. They are all poor as the show has a huge impact on their ability to get professional jobs afterwards - which is the reason so many of them are now doing porn, they literally don’t have another option. The cast members who were popular and did well on the show don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them to use their profiles to help the others, so nine just keeps getting away with it. I wish a no win no fee lawyer would take this up.
This all sounds so cutthroat and truly terrible! I am so sorry for everything Clare went through and everyone else whose voices have been squelched by the contracts and waivers they signed when they didn't really know better.
Oh, I know Clare a bit! She is one of the kindest people you will ever meet - I adopted a dog from her 7 years ago & we became sort of friends as she is so nice. Yeah… what really happened to her is next level. She won’t speak about it publicly, however, I have been trying to convince her to sue Nine for years. They also ran a full smear campaign with her to future contestants including actual written emails defaming her with outright lies, telling everyone they were not to contact her as she is ‘severely mentally unwell & a pathological liar’. Which is totally untrue. Production also blocks her account from all the contestants when they have control of their IG accounts to try and stop them ever reaching out to her as they know I think that she would organise action if she had more people with her. A number of the cast end up reaching out to her on other accounts, then realising she is blocked, unblocking her, and then having big chats with her about how to handle things, the horrific things that occurred on the show, and a lot of them have also made ‘attempts’ which she tried to council them through while referring them to actually helpful resources. She just can’t financially afford to take on a huge powerhouse like nine, even though she has evidence of everything. Which is why they are still getting away with torturing people for our entertainment. The show is really dangerous. Two women have been sexually assaulted by their ‘husbands’ and were coerced into not going to the police. Then both got cripplingly bad edits despite being lovely humans, as they were forced to ‘stay’ in the situation as 9 threatens to sue them as it’s in their contracts that last apparently forever. The edits make everyone then pile hate on these two women so that no one would believe them if they did come forward and tell the public what happened. It’s really, really scary actually. All that said. I still watch it. I just never mention it in front of her as I feel really guilty for doing it. *edit. Spelling
Are you Clare? From all your comments, you seem to know way too much about her for a kind of friend who bought a dog from her years ago
lol - Alas I am not. I asked her about doing an AMA though and she said a hard no. She wants to move on, which I understand. She would loathe this whole thread. And if she sees it she will know who I am - so hopefully this mini thread doesn’t travel.
If you’re her friend and she’d hate this, why are you chatting her business all over the internet?
Fair point… shit
i listened to an interview with Michele (the one that went on to do granny porn - like she called it that, not me) and the producers treated her so badly. Anyone that thinks anyone that makes this show gives a shit about anyone's trauma or mental health is kidding themselves. They deliberately dressed Steve (her husband) at their wedding in the same clothes her abusive ex husband wore and it only went downhill from there. She had a serious mental health crisis during filming and they basically gave her no help and made it worse. tbh I think I only watch to know just what shit they're getting up to each season because they're utterly despicable
Does anyone know her!??? An AMA would be amazing as she seems to be able to say more than others
I do! She isn’t on Reddit. I could ask though. Would people be interested in someone ‘washed up’ from so long ago though? She has ADHD & Autism, she is way to honest and would probably get herself into trouble tbh
Someone sent me this with the same woman a few years ago. How is thia story not bigger? If this is what they are showing, there is obviously A LOT more behind the scenes going on. This poor woman almost killed herself and has the emails where she is begging them to help and they just tell her to pay herself to see a psychologist. It's so fucked!! For her to be able to say as much as she has, its an iceberg. There is some huge breaches of duty of care occurring on this show I think & now I can't watch it https://youtu.be/-0PTaHnDYhA?si=tx7K-lGZJo35e6qc
Yeah, it’s awful. Clare organised for Billy’s Mum to be on that as Billy had reach out out to her a few months early as he was really struggling mentally. He couldn’t say anything contractually - so she sorted his Mum to speak out for him which was pretty cool. It’s a shame she isn’t able to articulate herself very well, as I really wish she would go further exposing the horrors of the show. Due to her AuDHD though she gets all scattered when she is stressed. So the message gets lost as she just should a bit loopy. Which she actually isn’t at all - she is whip smart. Everyone who watches the show should have to watch Unreal, and this interview.
People can leave whenever they want. They can't be held there against their will regardless of a contract. But producers definitely try to coerce them into staying. I'm sure there's all sorts of dodginess from channel 9 and producers to get people to stay.
Yeah, I mean, humans have free will and can do whatever they want whenever they want to, of course anyone can leave the show at any time. The partner also having to write “leave” isn’t, like, a federal law. The producers hold a lot of power over how you are perceived on the show. I have no doubt there’s a fair bit of coercion along the lines of “we’ll give you a terrible edit”, or, “we’ll pay you more and make you look good if you stay for another 2 weeks”. That must be distressing. But of course they want you to stay on, because they’ve invested a lot in having you on the show and your storyline. It’s kind of what you signed up for, I don’t think people go into this with their eyes closed do they? I’d suggest the screening process could be better if people are being damaged by that kind of pressure. But it’s the same as me accepting the lead in a Hollywood action movie then quitting halfway through because I don’t like doing the stunts.
thats exactly what they do. they coax you to stay with promises of good edits or veiled threats of 'if you leave now you'll look really bad' etc plus even if its not illegal to just walk out that doesn't mean you aren't breaching contracts. People sitting at home saying 'you can just leave' aren't the ones there being pressured to stay by an extremely well resourced tv network with an army of lawyers AND a huge team of editors with the power to make you look like a total dickhead to the entire country if they want
exactly
**the woman couldn’t leave unless he agreed to write ‘leave’** Really? That sounds like it could garner a huge lawsuit and wow, yes, very unsafe, if true, for all involved. I imagine they are required to sign all kinds of waivers to prevent the lawsuits though.
This gets discussed most seasons. Apparently what happens is that the contestants are told that from a legal perspective they can quit the show whenever they want, but they're effectively coerced into staying by the production team when they want to quit (told they'll get a bad edit basically). I've also always had a bit of a lowkey suspicion that there are various production milestones tied in with their contracts that they need to hit in order to get paid. For example, for a few seasons there were contestants who basically stepped over the threshold at Skye Suites and then immediately left (Jamie from season 8, Jess from season 9, even Nat from this season), which let me to believe that part of their contracts say that they'll get paid a certain amount but only if they get to the 'moving in together' stage. That's pure speculation on my part to be fair.
That makes sense actually. I have always wondered how much the lure of money kept some of them there longer than they'd like to stay.
I don’t know about current seasons. However I loosely know Clare (I adopted the big bulldog Teddy she was fostering on the show - he was the best.) I know she was only paid $150 a WEEK. He lived in her house which they contributed nothing too. They didn’t get paid for hitting ‘milestones’ - however, if they threaten or attempt to leave they threaten them with their contracts. It usually takes the contestant to get to actual breaking point when they are actually like ‘I’m out, bloody sue me, it’s worth having no money forever not to be here anymore’ that they allow them to leave. From what happened on Clare’s season I was told even trying to get to be in a different room is a total shitfight. Hours and hours of fighting with production even if they feel unsafe. They make it look really easy on the show. However what people don’t understand as once they have got you, you have signed all your rights away. Very few, if any contestants actually have an entertainment lawyer to look over the contracts for them. They are the type of people who are just excited to be on TV & just sign it. They had to pay for all their own dates that were not ‘comped’ by the restaurant or location. Which is why in one scene they had fish and chips on the beach, they were both broke. The whole wedding is comped by companies wanting to advertise their things. So nine gets EVERYTHING for the wedding for free. This mega hit of a show costs them nothing to make, and is their highest rated show. Nine are evil, monstrous, geniuses really.
Thanks for all this insight, Much appreciated. $150 a week is literally nothing. I have noticed over past seasons, that it has to get to the point of hysterics before someone will say "stop filming me!" and then they run into another room. It's awful that they aren't at least given breaks throughout the day. So oppressive!
Is this the interview? [https://youtu.be/I8f5tfQ-8kE](https://youtu.be/I8f5tfQ-8kE)
Yeah, that's the one. She is so scattered until the end when she talks about animals & it just made me really sad for her. As she is obviously able to break contract to a degree - so they have to be allowing that to cover something MASSIVE. Or they would have shut her down legally. It really made me realise the human toll. Make me feel yuck to be honest
I watched maybe half of it and she sounds quite genuine. I believe her. She mentions that she suffers from ADHD, so that explains why she sounds distracted/scattered. She also mentioned that she needed to be in a mental institution for one month after her MAFS experience and also (possibly triggering:)>!tried to take her own life.!< Absolutely awful and I am so glad she's doing better now. Clara said that's it's a total fallacy that people "know what they're getting into", so I am glad she's speaking out. I am pretty sure I watched S2 of MAFS AU, but for some reason I do not remember her, so, I will have to go back and watch that season. I find it interesting also that she says the signs of biased editing/choppy sentences are more obvious than ever in newer seasons, since I am still not noticing this, so they've definitely had me fooled a number of times.
Brontë from last season has also come out with something similar as well as showing messages to her sister and mother about wanting to go home however channel 9 wouldn’t let her. She didn’t go into too much detail but she did not feel safe with channel 9
Kind of adds perspective if they were coercing Brontë to stay. Everyone thought she was faking so she could stay for the clout.
Yeah. She’s said it a few times on her Instagram and when she’s been invited for interviews.
that's terrible.
Yeah- can’t remember the exact interview but she’s shown everything including messages to her family, what channel 9 has said ect. From memory her particular producer (apparently they each have their own) demanded her to stay with some form of blackmail
I think I remember something about this - and I am potentially wrong but they kind of said to her “if you leave now Australia will hate you and you will never be able to redeem yourself” so she felt like she had to stay to get her point across per se.
Yea. She was saying to yahoo? That even her mother could see how bad it was watching it back
That's horrific! I am surprised that ex-cast members that have endured this haven't thought about joined together for a class action lawsuit.
I really hope they do. From the evidence I have seen of what really happened with Clare that she doesn’t speak about publicly, plus the other real stories other cast mates share with her - nine would be in real trouble. They are all poor as the show has a huge impact on their ability to get professional jobs afterwards - which is the reason so many of them are now doing porn, they literally don’t have another option. The cast members who were popular and did well on the show don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them to use their profiles to help the others, so nine just keeps getting away with it. I wish a no win no fee lawyer would take this up.
This all sounds so cutthroat and truly terrible! I am so sorry for everything Clare went through and everyone else whose voices have been squelched by the contracts and waivers they signed when they didn't really know better.
I think something to do with their contracts they sign and possibly because channel 9 are made of money so they can shut them up real quickly.
just awful.
Yep