MasterChef Australia has always been about food . Cooking it. Presenting it. Obsessing over it. While the contestants’ personal lives and stories are all part of what makes us so emotionally invested in the beloved cooking show, it has long prided itself on being one of the only reality series on Aussie TV that doesn’t rely on the contestant’s interpersonal drama for plot points — but this wasn’t always the case.
The original format put the contestants in an isolated MasterChef bubble. For several months, the contestants were separated from friends and family while they shot the show with limited access to one landline phone. Their days were spent filming challenges, and at night, they’d be shuttled off to their accommodation to read cookbooks (which the house was stocked full of) and work on their culinary skills, with no real insight into what was happening in the world around them.
Although the contestants were doing their best to treat the MasterChef experience like a gastronomic training camp, many experienced elements of home sickness, or felt like they were out of the loop from the real word.
It was these strict conditions which led to the biggest scandal the show had experienced to date. In 2011 — two years after MasterChef premiered — the series was hit with its juiciest scandal: a contestant being booted from the show for sneaking a smartphone into the isolated contestant house.
While the controversy is absolutely ridiculous through a modern-day MasterChef lens, back in the early days of the cooking show juggernaut, it was a completely different beast.
Why was Mat Beyer booted from MasterChef in 2011?
After six weeks of competition, producers discovered that 23-year-old IT tech support worker Mat Beyer had smuggled a smartphone into the pressure-cooker environment, it was a big deal.
That night, judge Matt Preston was sent into the house, cravat and all, to tell Mat that he had been eliminated from the competition for breaking the rules. Mat copped it on the chin. While he explained to TV WEEK that he “didn’t check, but did break a rule”, he claimed that his motivation was to stay in touch with his girlfriend.
“I was missing her a lot and had a few things going on in my life so I just wanted to keep in contact with her,” he said at the time. “The 10 minute phone call I wasn’t coping with”.
While Mat was simply replaced by the last contestant to be eliminated, the drama wasn’t wrapped up in a little bow.
The next day, Mat spoke with Network 10’s news programme 6:30 and The Herald Sun. He claimed that he smuggled the device into the house in the hopes of hearing from his mother, who had been reported missing seven years earlier.
“My mum is a missing person and when someone is a missing person for seven years, she can potentially be declared dead,” Beyer told the Herald Sun at the time.
“I knew it was going to come up to Mother’s Day and then her birthday. I was feeling a bit emotionally vulnerable.”
However, despite Mat’s heart wrenching excuse, judge Gary Mehigan doubled down.
“It’s quite clear that Mat broke the rules,” he explained to 6:30.
“It quite clearly states from the get go that you can’t have a phone and that’s told to them in auditions and reinforced to them all the way through the show because it’s really, really important.”
When questioned as to why the rules were so strict, Gary struggled to answer.
“Well, why do you think?” he asked the journalist. “The rules state that you can’t have a phone. This is a lovely little food bubble where people are competing on an even keel.”
How does that compare to the MasterChef conditions today?
Fast forward to today, and the modern MasterChef experience looks entirely different. The strict, old-school culinary bubble is officially dead.
According to 10, the conditions changed during COVID to be two contestants sharing an apartment with their own bathroom and a shared kitchen, giving them the contestants the opportunity to work on their cooking skills.
Previously, the contestants had to abide by a roster for use of the one kitchen in the house but now they have full control over how and when they practice their culinary skills. The contestants are also provided with communal spaces so they can cook for eachother and blow off some steam outside of the kitchen.
Plus, there are no longer cameras following them around like documentary subjects, meaning that the in-house antics and the relationships with the fellow contestants are no longer the central focus of the series.
As for access to phones? The rules have come a long way since Matt Beyer’s days. While there is strictly no access to phones on set, contestants are allowed full phone and internet access to their devices.
“The contestant experience has definitely evolved over the years, as the show has,” explains Marty Benson, the Director of Content at Endemol Shine Australia.
“We are incredibly lucky that MasterChef contestants are always ready to put in the hard work behind the scenes to give themselves the best chance at success. We are there to support them and always ensure they have everything they need to be able to cook at their best.”
Ultimately, this has been a successful shift for the show. Not only does it make the series easier to film from a production point of view, but it makes MasterChef more unique in the saturated reality TV market. Fans they don’t want to see an argument over recipes on an iPhone, or contestants critique each other’s coulis. Audiences want to see the contestants sweat over a hibachi grill, panic when their jelly hasn’t set or scramble into the pantry when they’ve run out of garlic.
By carving out it’s own anxiety-inducing niche, MasterChef has won — and so have the contestants who have more freedom to live their lives while chasing their culinary dreams.
You can watch the current season of MasterChef on 10 or 10Play.
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