MAFS boss Tara McWilliams has told viewers not to expect any villains in the upcoming season of the hit reality TV show.
McWilliams is the Executive Producer of Shine Endemol, the company that produces MAFS, and shares the role with John Walsh. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, she explained that this year, the participants are much more complex than simply ‘villains’ or ‘heroes’.
“I don’t think anyone is a villain. They’re not characters out of a storybook, they’re real people that sometimes behave poorly,” she told the publication.
She added, “It doesn’t make them bad people. I think you can put the best meeting on a show like this, and the intensity of the experience makes people behave in a way that even surprises them.”
“I think season 10 will see some controversial people – absolutely.”
Relationship expert John Aiken, who councils the couples each week at the commitment ceremony, alongside Mel Schilling and Alessandra Rampolla, said that part of his job is to delve deep into the couple’s relationships, even when it’s uncomfortable.
“[We want] people discussing their relationships or their past patterns or how they want to do things differently,” he told the publication.
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“I’m not there to take sides. I’m not there to be friends. I just literally have a role to play, which is to hold the mirror up to patterns because a lot of the people on the new series don’t have any insight into why they’re single, or what they’re like in a relationship,” he added.
“My role is very much to highlight that to them. Now, some of them will push back, they don’t want to hear it.”
“We have scandals again, but scandals that you haven’t seen. And that’s what I love about this, the reality Gods have really kind of smiled down on us… because it’s never a rinse and repeat. It’s not the same thing [as previous seasons],” Walsh told Variety.
He added, “And we are absolutely going to get the country talking again. What I love about “MAFS” is it starts a lot of dialogue. Last year it was the Only Fans dialogue. It was the racism dialogue… This season does the same thing, and it’s going to have people divided about a lot of things, and it’s going to have people fired up about a lot of things.”
“It was a real challenge to come in with this. People’s expectations of “MAFS” are very high. And I used to get asked a lot ‘How are you going to top Season 9?’ And it’s a path fraught with danger to set out to try and top it,” he said.
For more on this topic, follow the Reality TV Observer.