MAFS Australia has officially come to an end in the UK with just the reunion episodes yet to air. This means no more following the antics of couples like Ryan and Jacqui, Adrian and Awhina, and Rhi and Jeff.
One person who captivated audiences this year was Jacqui, a pageant winner (?) and lawyer who had a rollercoaster ride with her now-ex husband Ryan. After filming finished, Jacqui has been vocal about her experience on the show and has insisted that she was given a bad edit.
While it's usual for the cast to hand over their socials to the production show, Jacqui created new socials so that she could 'tell her side of the story'. In an Instagram Q&A, she said that she was "struggling" to watch the show because "it's so edited out of context".
"I don't want the whole of Australia thinking I'm really nuts and a lunatic. I'm actually a really normal person - and not that not being normal is wrong - I'm just saying I'm not the crazy psycho on TV," she said.
However, Jacqui's co-star begs to differ as Rhi has claimed how she comes across on the show's edit is exactly what it was like to film with her. She told Yahoo!: "It's funny, you do see people talking about ‘bad edits’, and so far I think what has been shown on TV is exactly what people are like."
Jacqui has been accused by fans of the show of fake crying on the show, but Jacqui has pinned this down to the edit. In a TikTok she said: "Often if I'm crying, I would have been crying for five minutes, but what they're doing is editing so they have the start of me crying and the end of me crying, but they cut out the actual crying in the middle where tears come out."
However, Rhi described Jacqui as "the boy who cried wolf", adding: "There was a lot of Jacqui crying and that's why it started to lose its effect.
"I think that when someone can just turn it off and on like that, it does make you question how genuine they are. Like for me to cry, I know everybody's different, but I can't just wipe my tears and go, ‘Okay I’m fine’ and just walk on. It takes me a little bit to get over it because I am genuinely sad."
But, on whether she thinks Jacqui was acting on the show or being genuine, she said: "It's a good question and I really am unsure. I don't know. She's a really tricky one to understand. I tried multiple times throughout filming to see where she was coming from, that’s why I said I find Jacqui really hard to relate to.
"She can be a really nice person and we've had some good chats and there are times where I’m like, ‘Oh we’re getting on!’. But then the constant flip-flops and contradictions make it really hard.
"So maybe for the cameras she may have been a bit more performative or maybe exaggerated how she felt? I’m honestly not sure. I kind of feel bad saying that, but it's a tough one to understand."
Jacqui herself has admitted to "playing up" to the cameras, in an Instagram post she said: "I am fully in this for a life partner - taking it seriously, but having heaps of fun, laughter & playing up for the camera (a tiny bit)!"
The MAFS bride, spoiler alert, is now in a relationship with Clint who married Lauren on the show. He's also complained about the show's edit accusing MAFS Australia of 'Frankenbiting', which is when you take soundbites from other moments and insert them where it would make the story more interesting.
Talking to Yahoo!, he said: "So I watched back the dinner party after couples retreat, and when the voiceover came on to me sitting there with Lauren saying, 'Yeah I definitely think there's a spark there for me', I was like, well wait a minute, I don't remember feeling that and I don't remember saying it."
He revealed he'd actually made the remark on their wedding day, weeks earlier. He later said: "Like, you hear that they do Frankenbiting, I've heard it before, but to actually experience it and have it happen to yourself is a tough watch."
