Heart of gold
The Bachelor, The Bachelors,
During a decade of hosting Osher Günsberg has seen his fair share of blossoming romances – even meeting his own wife on the set of the show. Now, with three times the love on-screen in he stops to smell the roses with Siobhan Duck
infamous chocolate bath – which saw Richie Strahan and Alex Nation getting down and dirty in a tub filled with melted Lindt chocolate – Günsberg scoffs: “Ahh, no. I have very strict hygiene protocols.
“That’s not to say that I don’t think grand gestures have their place. So, I absolutely have had my wife blindfolded and taken her places to surprise her, in collaboration with my stepdaughter.
“That’s a lot of fun.” Günsberg also believes true love can be shown in more mundane ways.
“What’s romance to me?” he wonders.
“Ultimately, it’s that you’ve thought about this. And if you look at it like that then everything is romantic.
“Like, the other night, I was working really late, and I [was] on a plane really early the next morning because I am making a documentary, and I came home, and Audrey had packed a bag for me.
“Now that is romantic!” Günsberg met his wife, Audrey Griffen, while she was working as a make-up artist on The Bachelor in 2016. The pair married two years later and are parents to Griffen’s daughter, Georgia, 19, (from a previous relationship) and their son Wolfgang, four.
His own Bachelor-sparked relationship isn’t the show’s only successful love story. Five couples who met on the show have gone on to get hitched.
“There’s been a few happily ever afters,” Günsberg smiles.
“And that’s really lovely. And I like to think that even if we don’t get to happily ever after, whoever has been a part of it gets a bit more perspective on what it is that happened and why it happened.
“There’s nothing worse than looking back and realising: ‘Oh, every single one of my last few relationships has been exactly the same. And not figuring out why.”
Then, he adds in a theatrical whisper, “It’s you!”
Far from being the sort of “smug married” person that Bridget Jones lamented about, Günsberg doesn’t sit in judgement or hand out lectures to the love aspirants.
He learned way back when he was first hosting Australian Idol to be a sounding board for contestants rather than a counsellor.
“If they have a question, I will answer it in a very Socratic-questioning kind of way,” he shares.
“Because in any of this television, and this goes all the way back to Idol, it absolutely has to be their choice, whatever happens. Otherwise, the integrity of what we’re doing softens and they are no longer having an authentic emotional response. They’re now performing.”
That’s not to say that he hasn’t become friendly with the contestants over the years. He has a particular soft spot for single parents who roll the dice on finding love on The Bachelor, because of his own journey with meeting his wife and stepdaughter.
“So, I will talk about my experience and sometimes they will come around and have dinner with us and get
Three’s a charm: From left, Bachelors Wesley Senna Cortes, Ben Waddell and Luke Bateman are looking for love. “a vibe for what things could be like,” he says.
“That’s nice and I am very grateful to be able to do that and that Audrey and Georgia are open to it.”
Of course, like any show The Bachelor has evolved with time. When it first launched in 2013 with Tim Robards as its debut love seeker, The Bachelor largely adhered to the tried-and-true US formula.
Osher Günsberg: “Modern dating for people in their 20s and 30s unfortunately is often not a very great place.”
A decade on and the show – much like dating itself – has changed. Instead of one ridiculously handsome man holding all the cards – or in this case, roses – we have three suitors (which gives the women a lot more choice and power). This season, there’s Ben Waddell, an environmentally savvy model, ex-NRL player Luke Bateman and Wesley Senna Cortes, a Brazilian student-turnedinfluencer.
“When it started it was reflective of what was aspirational at the time – a big mansion, lots of candles, flowers!,” he explains.
“It started before smartphones. Over time as dating changes, and connectivity changes and our relationships – how we communicate – changes too.”
In some ways, dating apps are responsible for the popularity of dating shows. With increasing numbers of people growing exhausted and frustrated by easy hook-ups taking the place of meaningful connections, dating shows offer an opportunity for participants to revel in the art of seduction.
“Modern dating for people in their 20s and
30s unfortunately is often not a very great place,” Günsberg shrugs.
“From my view and my very brief experience with dating apps in 2013, before I met my wife, people can get very worn down by the transactional nature of using a dating app. “And that’s because women go on these apps when they are lonely and men go on them when they are horny, as a general rule. So, they are looking for different things.”
In addition to mixing up the format, The Bachelors has a new location. While last season was shot in the heat of the Gold Coast sun, this year, the production was filmed in Melbourne in the middle of winter.
The new setting has given the series a fresh (albeit chillier) vibe, which Günsberg says offered plenty of opportunities for the romance of a roaring fireplace.
“Like any good relationship, you’ve got to keep things fresh and reinvent things,” he laughs.
“You’ve got to make sure that the other person feels seen. We have done a lot [in] New South Wales and we have done some sightseeing of some of the more public parts of Queensland, the Gold Coast, and now we are having a moment where we let the people of Melbourne feel seen too.”