Married at First Sight was ‘a joke’, says Lacey
The NZ reality show did not conduct the rigorous testing it claimed to, former contestants say. By Glenn McConnell.
Isabella Couwenberg has tried hard not to label herself a millennial.
‘‘But of course, given my birthdate, I ama millennial,’’ the 23-year-old said. ‘‘I do think that millennials get a bad rap, which is a very ‘millennial’ thing of me to say.’’
The label came with negative connotations, she said. Generalisations were ‘‘a bit unfair’’. One stereotype was that her generation expected a trophy for showing up to work.
‘‘We’re very technology abled, as well as willing to embrace new ideas. We’re able to work well under pressure and juggle a range of tasks as well as move at pace. We operate in a quick-thinking environment with a lot of hustle, which I enjoy.
‘‘I thrive under pressure so it’s great. I’m really lucky in that I get to work with a lot of senior people who I can learn so much from and I’m good at putting my hand up, which is perhaps something that the more reserved older generations didn’t do so much.’’
Millennials were the leaders of the future, she said. ANOTHER Married at First Sight NZ participant has challenged the process for matching couples on the show as one of her fellowparticipants prepares for a court case arising from his involvement on the popular reality series.
Lacey Swanepoel claims that she never got to meet the Married at First Sight ‘‘experts’’ who were promoted as providing matchmaking advice before the series began, and didn’t receive testing to help identify her best partner.
Her claims follow the complaints of fellow participant Haydn Daniels, who has launched legal action to have his made-forTV marriage annulled.
Daniels has applied to the Family Court, where he will argue his marriage should not have gone ahead because he was convinced that scientific methods would be used to find his perfect match, but that never transpired. ‘‘I did not give true consent to be married in this situation,’’ his affidavit reads.
Swanepoel has also spoken out about the show, challenging the ‘‘science’’ the producers said would be used to match participants.
The series, which screened last year, saw five pairs of strangers married, then their lives together lived out in front of the cameras.
Despite MediaWorks claiming that the show was ‘‘a viable way for people to meet and build solid relationships’’, four of the marriages didn’t survive the series. The series’ popularity means a second season is in preparation.
MediaWorks has said its show abided by the ‘‘global standards’’ of the international franchise. MediaWorks and the production company behind the New Zealand series, Warner Brothers, declined to comment on details of those standards and the role of the two experts who were promoted as providing expert guidance for the match-making element of the programme.
MediaWorks has said everyone who goes on the show is made aware of what to expect, but has declined to comment further on the latest criticisms.
Swanepoel – who has previously criticised her treatment on the programme – described the matching process as a joke.
She said neither of the show’s two experts,Tony Jones and Pani Farvid, met her to find a match. She said the only ‘‘testing’’ she went through was with a Warner Brothers staff member who asked her to say if their male co-workers were ‘‘hot or not’’.
‘‘I just had a generic chat with a psychologist to see if I was a normal, sane person,’’ Swanepoel said. ‘‘I never met with Tony or Pani until one of the first days of shooting.’’
She left the show after just seven days of filming, she said, after learning her husband, Luke Cederman, was a friend of the show’s producers.
‘‘Luke knew quite a few producers and other people associated with Warner Brothers. And he was quite close friends with them, so I was happy to leave. It was just too close to home,’’ she said. Cederman declined to discuss Swanepoel’s comments.
‘‘I wasn’t there for fun, I wasn’t there for six weeks of TV,’’ she said, adding she truly believed the process could give her a chance at finding love.
She even confronted one of the producers, asking if the show used any legitimate science to form the matches. ‘‘They’ve always stuck to it,’’ she says.