Mel Schilling is elated when we sit down to chat. And why wouldn’t she be? She has a lot to celebrate.
Apart from just wrapping another stellar season of Married At First Sight UK, and gearing up for another huge season in Australia, the star was recently given the news that her cancer is now in remission!
“It’s wonderful,” Mel, 53, ecstatically tells Woman’s Day about the news.
“It’s been a really tough year, but I’m pleased to be through the hardest part.”
The dating expert and coach says the fact that she was given the all-clear right before Christmas made the news all the sweeter.
“I was diagnosed right before Christmas [in 2023], and that was meant to be our first cold Christmas [after relocating to the UK] – and I guess you could say it was really cold,” she reveals.
“So to be given the better news this time around, we made sure we went all out at Christmas. We went to Salzburg [in Austria] and did the Sound Of Music [tour] and did all the Christmas markets and went absolutely Christmas crazy,” she says with a laugh.
“It was magical and brilliant.”
Despite Mel’s diagnosis, and the countless rounds of chemotherapy and surgeries that followed, she made it her mission to keep things as normal as possible, not only for her family, but for her own sanity.
And it’s why, rather miraculously, she continued to shoot MAFS UK and MAFS Australia back to back.
“I needed to keep working,” she admits.
“For my own peace of mind and just to feel like I still had that part of myself. I felt like I had lost so much of myself throughout the whole illness and treatment process.
“So for me, being able to turn up on set, get my hair and makeup done, put on a fabulous frock and step into professional mode, it was actually really important to me and I’m so glad I was able to do it.”
Mel adds that since battling cancer, it’s made her open her eyes more to the antics MAFS participants sometimes display – and she’s not suffering any fools this time around.
“You’ll probably see me in my grumpy pants a little bit more than usual,” she says with a laugh.
“My tolerance is a little bit lower than it normally would be this season.”
