It’s not your typical Getaway segment. This week, on the travel show, special guest presenter Evelyn Ellis meets her boyfriend Duncan James’ sister Renee for the first time, over a meal of Korean barbecue.
“There’s a time and place to meet the in-laws – why not do it on television?” the former Married At First Sight bride tells TV WEEK with a laugh. “She’s lovely. I think the first thing I said to her was, ‘You look like Duncan with long hair. Like, you’re Duncan with boobs and long hair.’ Good-looking genes run in the family, I tell you.”
From MAFS to Getaway!
(Image: Supplied)The segment, which also covers thrift shopping in Sydney, is Evelyn’s second for Getaway. She says that when she went on MAFS she had no ambitions of scoring a TV presenter gig out of it.
“To tell the truth, I’m overwhelmed and extremely grateful with how everything’s turned out,” she admits. “I’m pinching myself every day.”
The 27-year-old, who grew up in Sydney but spent years based in the UK working as a model, says she went on MAFS this year because she had a feeling “something great” would come out of it.
Evelyn with her boyfriend Duncan.
(Image: Instagram)“Duncan and I spoke about this quite a lot. As crazy as it sounds, we really did have a feeling in our bellies we were going to meet someone.”
Being an intruder on MAFS, Evelyn got to see a photo of Duncan, who married Alyssa Barmonde, before she started filming on the show.
“It was him shirtless on his balcony with a Santa hat on and I thought, ‘Ooh – he’s a bit of all right!'” she says.
But for Evelyn, who married Rupert Bugden on the show and “genuinely did try” to make the relationship work, it wasn’t just about Duncan being “extremely attractive”.
“I’m pinching myself every day.”
(Image: Instagram)“In my industry, you meet attractive people every day,” she says. “It takes so much more to have something so real and find a connection. I think Duncan and I really found that in each other, which is the part that still blows my mind.”
Evelyn and Duncan went public with their relationship in May, something she says was “scary”. But it was a decision they put a lot of thought into.
“Of course I see a future with Duncan, otherwise we wouldn’t have put ourselves in this position so publicly,” she explains. “It forced us to have those really serious chats quite early on.”
Evelyn reveals she “definitely” wants kids, and she wants to have them “in the near future”.
“I want to be a young mummy,” she says. “I’m an only child, so I come from a very small family and didn’t exactly have the white Christmases and over-the-top traditions. That’s something I want for my life and my kids.”
As for the other MAFS brides and grooms, Evelyn says it’s hard to stay close to all of them.
“I probably talk the most with Rupert and Janelle [Han], now that Janelle’s moved to Sydney,” she says. “But we check on other castmates here and there – check on Melinda [Willis], check on Sandy [Jawanda], check on Claire [Nomarhas] – making sure everyone’s doing OK. But there’s a lot going on.”
Evelyn starred on Big Brother UK.
(Image: Supplied)For Evelyn, her focus is on her TV career. She says she’s really enjoying presenting, although she admits she’s “not perfect” at it, and she suspects Duncan would be a better TV presenter than she could ever be.
“I’d love to see him hosting sports or something,” she says. “Even though I’m not interested in sport at all, he would make me watch sport, let me just put it that way!”
Beyond Getaway, Evelyn says her dream job in TV would be to host a show – like a dating show.
“I watch a hell of a lot of reality TV, so I’d love to kind of go full circle one day and host something like that.”
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