Former MAFS ‘relationship expert’ Trisha Stratford has slammed the reality show and said that the people who take part in the experiment are “outrageous”.
Stratford made up one of three ‘relationship experts’ on MAFS for seven seasons from 2015. In 2020, she announced she was leaving the show.
“It became really clear to me over the last two seasons, but particularly the last season, that the type of people applying for the show were just becoming more and more outrageous,” she told Simon Barnett and Phil Gifford on Newstalk ZB’s.
She added, “and it became very difficult to match people who were on the show for the wrong reasons. I’m in my integrity and it’s just not working for me anymore. I don’t feel I have enough involvement in the matching, cause it kind of moved from matching to casting.
“I understand the network and the production company need to make a show that’s going to rate. There has to be a happy medium in there, and for me, it just swung too much the other way.”
Trisha was replaced by sexpert Alessandra Rampolla. Shortly after her resignation, she told Woman’s Day New Zealand that she left the show because she didn’t agree with the way that participants were treated by the production team.
“By the end, I couldn’t compromise my professional and personal standards because there were participants on the show who I felt shouldn’t have been there.”
Love Film & TV?
Get the latest Film & TV news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
“At a couple of dinner parties I felt sick. I felt in my guts that this wasn’t what I’d want to be watching at home on TV. The participants we got in season six and seven were so outrageous and outside the norm that it wasn’t what I signed up for.”
While there isn’t an exact premiere date for season ten of MAFS yet, the show generally begins in January each year. Last year the first episode aired on January 31st, so MAFS fans can expect to get their dose of their show in a matter of weeks.
