Wednesday night’s episode of MAFS: After The Dinner Party got off to a sombre start, as the show paid tribute to long-time Married At First Sight relationship expert Mel Schilling – who tragically passed away on March 24, aged just 53.
Host Laura Byrne delivered a beautiful tribute, honouring the “extraordinary woman”, wife, mother and MAFS star, who graced our screens for a decade. She explained that the episode itself had been recorded with the participants a day before the news broke.
“You didn’t need to know Mel personally to feel her impact,” she said. “She had a rare and a beautiful way of understanding people, meeting them with compassion and gently guiding them towards something better. Her kindness, her empathy and her authenticity has had a lasting impression on so many of us.”
And with that, the intro rolled and hosts Laura – in a different outfit – Brittany Hockley and Jules Lund were on the couch, ready to weigh in on this week’s Dinner Party shenanigans. And this week, they had some very special “all-star” guests in attendance!
MAFS’ Golden Couple come unravelled
It was the unravelling that no-one saw coming! Thick as thieves almost the entire way through the experiment, the cracks finally began to show this week when Alissa and David went on their Homestay Visit.
With Alissa’s mum putting pressure on her settle down and have a baby, she started to spiral. David told her he needed space. So what exactly went wrong?
“I put so much into this relationship. Being calm wasn’t an accident – that’s something I chose way before the experiment,” David explained as he joined the hosts on the couch. “So, I mean, for me to get to my emotional limit, it took a lot. Yeah.”
Jules questioned why Alissa warned him, “Be careful how you phrase this” when they were walking into the Dinner Party, to which he replied that he felt she was trying to put on a front, that they were really strong, when in fact they were anything but.
“Maybe it wouldn’t make her look in the best light, you know?” he said. “It felt like she wanted us to always present as we’re the strongest. We’re strong.”
Some previously unseen footage revealed a conversation between the couple in which Alissa shared her concerns that perhaps David wasn’t as ambitious or successful as her, not owning his own house or being as worldly.
Laura said while conversations about finances are “fair”, Alissa came off as “patronising”.
“I’ve never shown her my bank balance, I’ve never told her what I own, my assets,” David said. “I’ve tried to reassure her that that’s not an issue.”
But there’s still hope!
“Do you think that you’re enough for Alissa?” Laura asked, point blank.
“One hundred per cent,” he replied. “From her perspective, I just think she can’t see it.”
Additional unseen footage, this time from the Retreat, shows Alissa dramatically storming out of their room after refusing to stay in it as the curtains were too sheer and it was letting light in. She was yelling at David the whole time as he tried to calm the situation.
“That was probably the worst [things ever got],” David reasoned.
“I think that this might be a perfect example of when Alissa says, you know, ‘I want someone who stimulates me,’ or ‘You don’t stimulate me necessarily’ – what she might actually be saying is that you’re not rising to the drama. Because she’s throwing it at you and you’ve stayed really calm,” Laura pointed out.
“One hundred per cent. Oh yeah,” David agreed.
So does David think he’s “almost in love” with Alissa?
“Yeah. I want to see this through,” he said. “You know, love is the scariest thing in the world. And I’d be devastated if it didn’t work out long term.”
Danny’s put in the hot seat
After blindsiding his wife by saying he would feel like “a little b**ch” if he moved into her home, Danny was in the firing line, asked to explain himself. Naturally, he doubled down.
“When I’m in a relationship, you want, as a man, you want to feel like you bring something to the table,” he began stumbling through his answer. “And, like, going to Adelaide and moving into Bec’s house, in that sense, it wasn’t me feeling like I was bringing nothing to the table. So it made me feel like a bit of a b**ch.
“I’m a man who, in previous relationships, like, provides for a woman and looks after her, and they ain’t got to pay a bill, they’re looked after.”
Asked if he’s intimidated by Bec’s success, Danny insisted he’s not – he simply dealt with the situation “badly”.
“I said some wrong things. I’m man enough to sit here and admit it,” he said, adding a sneaky dig at his rival: “Some people don’t even come and sit on the sofa and admit their wrongs. I can name names. There’s so many names, you know – Gia, Cassandra, whichever one you want.”
Bec and Danny at breaking point
Bringing Bec out to address the situation, she said she had no idea Danny was uncomfortable “to that point” – despite Danny’s insistence they had discussed it.
While David said Danny is a big jokester and that he thinks Bec “doesn’t necessarily like the joke and he goes too far”, Bec stands her ground, insisting “that’s not it”.
“Everything can’t be a joke,” she said. “I’m sorry, like, it’s not. Coming on to this show and getting married isn’t a joke to me. It is serious for me. And in that moment when we were sitting there by the fire, we’re having a nice conversation, a genuine conversation. But in that moment, I needed seriousness. It’s not the time to joke about my cousin being into you.”
“But, like, that’s what my personality is,” Danny argued. “Like, I ain’t soppy b****cks … You know that, Bec. You know how I am. I’m never serious for more than five minutes, except for when I’m on this f**king sofa.”
In some unseen footage, the moments after their Homestay blow-up is revealed – during which they hug it out, only for Danny to badmouth his wife to producers as he demands a hotel for the night.
“I’m not f**king staying here,” he told producers. “You can’t speak to her when she’s like this. Yeah, and good luck to me for the rest of the night, getting crucified. You can’t talk to her, ever! And I’m f**ked here now, I’m f**ked!”
Back on the couch, Bec is fuming! Is this the straw that could break the camel’s back?
“What you say to me behind closed doors and what you’re saying to the camera is never the truth,” she declared. “I’m waking up in the morning, going to a Dinner Party, going to a Commitment Ceremony, saying everything is great, because that’s what you’ve told me. And then… when you’re in front of a camera… you’re saying something completely different.”
For the first time, things are looking seriously frosty between the pair – is Bec’s perfectly curated facade starting to slip?
Separate pages, separate interviews
Sam and Chris couldn’t even be on the same couch together for their After The Dinner Party interview, such is the sorry state of their post-MAFS relationship!
Thus, Chris joined Laura and Jules on the couch, while Sam sat backstage with Britt.
“One thing that I’ve learned from this experiment is I need to stay in my own lane,” Chris explained. “I’ve made so much change in my life since that moment, and I will take accountability. But I felt comfortable just being here, owning it on my own.”
Addressing his friendship with Gia, Chris said it’s “a little different now” than it was on the show. In fact, while she was initially going to come on After The Dinner Party with him, he decided it was best that he “stayed in his own lane” and did his own thing, separate from any outside influences.
“We haven’t seen each other,” he said. “I would call it a friendship, yeah. It’s just a different type of friendship. I think our lives have just gone a little bit separate. I’m not saying that I don’t like her. She’s off with a new partner and I’ve got my thing now.”
His relationship with Sam back in the spotlight, Laura questioned whether he actually put as much effort into Homestays as he thinks he did. “That was my way of trying,” he said.
Exclusive audio of Sam at the farm shows him ranting about Chris not apologising to him and gaslighting him. Chris is dumbstruck.
“How much more reflecting can I do? Like, we had a defensive conversation,” he explained. “Sam’s entitled to his opinion but, for me, I thought we could have left it behind and moved forward.”
While Laura and Jules do agree that Sam wouldn’t have accepted anything less than Chris grovelling at his feet, some more unseen footage – of Chris and Gia, and Sam and Danny going at one another, unleashing a diatribe of nasty comments – does nothing to help either’s cause.
“The common denominator, once again, it’s you standing next to Gia,” Laura points out. “It was the same in the last unseen footage. Why do you want to be friends with someone like that?”
“Yeah, look, it’s horrendous behaviour. That was awful,” Chris agreed. “Like, it’s just s**t behaviour.”
Sam: single and ready to mingle!
Taking his turn in the hot seat – in a different room – Sam sat down with Britt to talk about the demise of his relationship with Chris.
First, he addressed why he “phoned ahead” to say he wasn’t willing to join his former spouse on the couch.
“After seeing the unseen footage last week, I just don’t think I was ready to sit next to him,” Sam explained. “I felt pretty hurt by it, and I just didn’t think a conversation between the two of us would have been productive.”
Sam said he felt like he was left with no choice but to break up with Chris after feeling like he was fighting for their relationship.
“I just wanted him to prove to me that he wanted to be with me or tell me he doesn’t. And that’s what the questions were about,” he said.
Despite everything, Sam insists he was locked in and ready to keep going, had Chris put in the effort.
“Yeah, I would have kept riding out the experiment, for sure,” he said. “Like, if he said that he really did want to be with me, and he was sorry. But I had to feel it to move forward.”
Since leaving the experiment, Chris has messaged Sam to apologise, but Sam said he didn’t write back, because he “didn’t really see a future friendship with Chris”. Ouch!
As for his current status, Sam isn’t seeing anyone just yet. But he took his ring off right then and there as he declared himself back on the market!
MAFS’ ‘Hall of Famers’ weigh in!
Former MAFS favourites Domenica Calarco (Season 9) and Jamie Marinos (Season 12) made a very special guest appearance this week, bringing plenty of experience and hindsight to the couch.
And even they are shocked at the level of drama on the show this season!
“We’ve had spicy seasons, but I think the nastiness this year is a whole other level!” Jamie said.
Weighing in on the Bec and Gia feud, the women – who themselves experienced more than their share of controversy during their own seasons – didn’t hold back.
“Bec reached out to me during filming, yeah,” Jamie said.
“Gia called me and pretty much said verbatim, ‘I’ve got an Olivia [Frazer] on my hands,’” Dom said, citing the archnemesis from her season. “It definitely offended me. It offended me watching it because now I’m kind of like, well, number one, no no no no no no no, you don’t have an Olivia on your hands. Like, you’ve got no idea what I went through. But also, if she is referring to Bec, they’re just as bad as each other. So you’re an Olivia too.”
Jamie explained that, despite Bec reaching out to her, she “kept everyone at arm’s length”, calling it a “risky game”.
As for their own experience being at the centre of a MAFS feud, Jamie said she “hated it”. “I liked watching everyone else explode,” she added.
“I really didn’t think that I would find myself in the centre of the drama that I did in my season and it just happened, like, organically,” said Dom. “And once it did, it just, it never let down. And I feel like there’s still a feud to this day.”
Unseen audio revealed just how calculated Bec is, going out with Gia as she pretended to be friends with her. Dom and Jamie couldn’t believe what they were hearing!
For her part, Dom insisted smashing the glass during her altercation with Olivia happened in the heat of the moment and was the furthest thing from calculated.
“[I] definitely did not plan on smashing a glass – I snapped,” she said. “[This is] totally calculated.”
With one final Commitment Ceremony to go before our couples must decide whether to proceed to Finals Vows or not, we’ll be on tenterhooks waiting to see who makes it through Final Test Week!
And don’t forget to catch all the drama of MAFS: After The Dinner Party on its new night, starting Monday April 6, only on Stan.
