Married At First Sight star Teejay Halkias has claimed he spent an incredible $10,000 of his own money while appearing on the show - but I don’t understand how.
The 29-year-old, who appeared on the most recent season of MAFS Australia, revealed the staggering sum that he spent during his two month reality show stint.
Teejay was a latecomer to season 12 of the hit Channel Nine dating show and married Beth Kelly. Their marriage seemed to have promise at first, but it went downhill quickly after homestays when Teejay admitted he was struggling to develop romantic feelings for his wife. They still tried to make things work, but ended up leaving before final vows when it became clear their relationship could not be saved.
Speaking on the On It Off It podcast, Teejay claimed: “Pay is a very, very loose word for what they do for us. It's expensive being on the show. I think I spent close to 10 grand of my own money.”
Teejay explained that he was paid $150 a day for his stint on the dating experiment, but alleged that this did not begin to cover his expenses. Explaining further, he said: “They pay for lunch, Monday to Friday, but you've got to buy your breakfast and dinner, make all your food, your groceries . . .”
“Commitment ceremonies, dinner parties, you need two new outfits every week. They don't pay for that either. And then you've got to date this person off-camera as well and go on off-camera dates. You've got to pay for that as well.”
The show’s hosts, fitness influencer Louis Phillips and stand-up comedian Fergus Neal, reacted with shock at this news, declaring it a “joke” that the production don’t pay for more things.
. . . Am I missing something!? Teejay has just explained . . . normal life. Everybody has to pay for their food, whether they buy from the supermarket and eat at home or go out for meals. He’s lucky that the production team paid for his lunch five days a week. If anything that should have saved him money, surely?
In terms of paying for dates, again, isn’t that what everybody has to do? It doesn’t make a difference if you’re dating as part of a TV show or dating in real life, if you want to build romantic connections that does inevitably end up costing money . . . There’s usually dinner dates, drink dates, maybe a cinema or activity date while you get to know each other in those early days. Those things continue later in to the relationship too, even when married.
Plus, I think $150 for a day of filming is reasonable. This is probably about the average daily wage for a lot people, if not even a bit more, so I don’t think he’s losing out too much there. Although admittedly I don’t know what Teejay usually earned day-to-day in his work as a business development manager. I do also understand there’s a high likelihood that Teejay will have had to be available for filming at unsociable hours, and also for longer hours than anyone would expect to work . . . but still.
So, firstly, what’s he moaning about? Secondly, how on earth does two months of food, dates and new outfits add up to $10,000!? Unless Teejay had been buying edible gold and hiring private planes for his dates I just can't fathom how he'd spend that much.
From what he has said, the only additional expense which is above and beyond things people need to pay for in normal life, is the outfits for dinner parties and commitment ceremonies. But, even then there’s only one of each of these every week.
As Teejay entered the experiment later than the other participants, he was only in the show for about two months - about half the time that the original cast members were if they stayed all the way to the end of the process.
That means he needed eight new outfits. Once again, I have to question how much Teejay spent on these outfits. I don’t know for sure, granted, but I can’t imagine there were stipulations that the outfits had to be designer, for example, or cost at least $1,000 each. Has the man not heard of secondhand shops or sale rails?
Plus, again I can’t say for sure that all the cast weren’t told that all of their outfits had to be brand new for the show, but assuming that this rule wasn’t given did he really not have anything in his wardrobe already that was appropriate? Even one or two outfits would have saved him some money. I also think it’s staggering that he even had £10,000 to spend in the first place.
Teejay is, however, not the only reality show cast member who has complained about the pay they received during their time on a dating show. Renee Poche, aged 32, who took part in season five of Netflix’s Love Is Blind claims to have only been paid just $8,000 (around £6,000) for her time on the show - which included working up to 20 hours per day and seven days a week.
