June 13, 2024 • 19 mins
There’s no better way to unwind at the end of a long day of work than binging on reality TV.
From The Block, to Celebrity Treasure Island, Kiwis have always had a soft spot for the genre. Right now, the country is obsessed with Married at First Sight New Zealand, back for its fourth season after a five year hiatus.
And while we may still be mad about the genre, a lot has changed for reality TV since the local version of the international hit debuted in 2017.
Today on The Front Page, AUT University senior communications lecturer, Rebecca Trelease, joins us to discuss our MAFS obsession, and the changing world of reality TV.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer: Paddy Fox
Producer: Ethan Sills
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Gilda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. There's no
better way to unwind at the end of a long
day of work than binging on reality TV. From the
Bloc to Celebrity Treasure Island, Kiwis have always had a
(00:27):
soft spot.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
For the genre.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Right now, the country is obsessed with Married at First
Sight New Zealand, back for its fourth season after a
five year hiatus, and while we may still be mad
about the genre, a lot has changed for reality TV
since the local version of the international hit debuted in
twenty seventeen. Today on the Front Page, aut University senior
(00:52):
communications lecturer Rebecca to Release joins us to discuss math's
obsession and the changing world of reality TV. Rebecca, you're
a bit of a reality TV expert, hey, when it
comes to your studies, aren't you.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Thanks for putting it that way. That's really kind of you.
I did my PhD thesis on the reality television genre
as a whole and the things that it does and
does well, so yeah, in some ways, I maybe am.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I right to say that you've had first hand experience
as well with this genre.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah, so I was like a year in the first
year of putting together what I would be researching. I
actually appeared on a New Zealand reality show as well,
which one was that I was in season two of
The Bachelor New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So obviously at the moment, now Married at First Sight
New Zealand is airing and people are just absolutely obsessed
with it. It comes off the back of the Australian version,
which is also a huge hit. Here what is it
about maths that captures the audience's attention.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I think it's really interesting because it's come off the
back of the Australian Maths or Merit at First Sight,
where there was so much talk about it, and to
live up to kind of the drama that exists in
maths Australia, it's a big task, but it's definitely taking
on its own way into the maths format, this New
(02:22):
Zealand version. I think there's also different reasons why we
watch the different romance reality shows. So maybe you want
to watch the risky, raunchy Love Island that maybe you
want to see the romance of the Bachelor. But for
maths in particular, we're learning about commitment and we're learning
about those long term relationships. And I think that that's
(02:44):
its own unique way into looking at ourselves but looking
at our society. And so in particular here we've got
what is the society of commitment in alter or? It's
really intriguing and I think we as viewers just want
to know that, we want to understand that.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
On three now week, I have another thing.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Are the couples up for the test?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Jeff Rockett?
Speaker 5 (03:09):
How are you?
Speaker 4 (03:09):
I just don't know what's really married at first Sight
New Zealand stream first on three now.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I mean I've watched Maths for a fair few years
now and I have noticed myself, especially with the Australian
version just the last season, that the experts they're getting
less lenient with things like gas lighting and toxic relationships
and stuff like that. Do you think that coming into
twenty twenty four there is much more of a focus
(03:39):
on healthy relationships over maybe the dramatic launchy ones that
we like to watch.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
And I think with something like Maths, which has been
going for a few years, we're about ten eleven years
after the first one over in Europe now, so there
was a period where the experts weren't calling participants out,
and so because they weren't doing that, the responses from
media who were following the show, from the audiences who
(04:05):
were then commenting on the show, they started to hold
the experts accountable a bit more. And so there's like
a slight shift and actually the experts realizing the audience
wants to see these people being called out, and so
now we can see those same behaviors that we're wanting
as audience members playing out on screen as the experts
(04:27):
talk about those words like being gaslet or the word
recently that we might have learned was the avoidant attachment
style and that didn't even come from one of the
experts this last week. But we're learning the types of
words that we should be looking out for and that
we maybe already recognize. We just need the language of them.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Dating shows have a pretty long history in New Zealand
and around the world.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Why does that subgenre appeal to us so much?
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Or we're all humans like this is one of our
basic needs is to connect to someone else, to have
some type of not necessarily romantic or love connection, but
a connection, and to have that feeling of being seen
by someone else and so while we might have those
reality shows that focus on a skill set or like
(05:16):
it's a competition to get to the end, romance shows
are really something that every single human can relate to,
whether or not we want that form of connection or
if we have a desire for that connection. There has
been research into why audiences choose particular versions of shows
that they're watching, and they found that the values that
(05:39):
the person has in themselves in their own life tends
to inform the shows that they look for. And so
because so many humans have love and connection as this
idea of that's an important value in their own life,
they want to see those values played out on television.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
I guess given these shows do still drop week to
week rather than Netflix, you can binge everything in one weekend.
I often think about the times when you'd be watching
say Er, and everyone goes to work the next day
and remembers when Dr Green died, right, and that's what
everyone was talking about because everyone was watching it the
night before. And if I've dropped any spoilers, it's been
(06:20):
about twenty years.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
Mark Dave.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
This morning, I sent this on so that you might
know who was thinking of you all. I'm hid it.
He appreciated knowing you would remember him well.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
But I mean, I guess that sense of it coming
out every week is something like this really our last
true water cooler shows.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
I guess absolutely. The appointment television. It was something that
television has built into us as viewers from the very beginning.
So even if television was only being broadcast a couple
of hours at nighttime, we would schedule our lives around
making sure we were sitting in front of it. Now
this is generations ago, so this wasn't me personally, but
(07:10):
now I do actually schedule my life around television. And
when I was younger, it was to make sure that
one night of the week you could watch say Er
or Gray's Anatomy or something, as it was broadcast and
you couldn't catch up on streaming. You might have to
wait for the recap the next episode a week later.
We actually schedule our lives around having access to that
(07:32):
information that we can then have conversations the next day.
And so now that we have streaming services where you
can binge twelve episodes over a weekend, it's kind of
counting on everyone being available for that one weekend to
watch the entire thing. In one go. And so when
we go back to these formats that are kind of
(07:55):
drip feeding the content out to us, it forces us
as an audience to be drawn back to how they're
telling us to consume. We can't just leave it until
two nights later because there's two more episodes now, we're
so behind. So being able to put them out at
a specific time on a specific day, it's encouraging the
(08:16):
audiences to actually put in that effort. It's not as
easy as just putting something on the streaming service anymore.
I need to be there at a specific time and place.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Maps New Zealand has returned after a few controversies in
its past, most notably I remember in twenty nineteen Chris
Mansfield and is on screen. Brider actually edited out of
the third season before it went to air after it
was discovered he had domestic charges against him in the US.
What safety measures are there to protect the talent on
(08:57):
these shows?
Speaker 4 (08:58):
That example is really interesting because there was concern about
the wife he was married to, you know, like was
she being put in a safe situation. The idea of
casting these shows and doing checks before someone arrives on
the show, that is a responsibility of production to make
sure that they know everything about someone. There's also that
(09:18):
negotiation from the participant in ensuring that everything is shared
as well. And so while production for that specific example
said that they did the checks they could, but I
mean it doesn't appear if it was in a different
country or something. They do have to rely on the
participant as well. So there's this kind of negotiation between
two parties there as to how a situation like that happens.
(09:41):
And it also happened with f Boy Island. A participant
also hadn't necessarily declared, and there again were issues around
the specific thing that he had been accused of in
a romantic setting. Now, these contestants could have been in
a different type of format, different show that wasn't relying
(10:02):
on their ability to perform in a relationship. They could
have been in a cooking contest. But because these shows
were specifically about being an intimate, vulnerable conversations and settings
like they're physically married and staying in a room together overnight,
there is a duty of care that is required. But
(10:24):
I'm not sure how that could be prevented unless production
and participants are working together on that. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
The thought of being married after a stranger, especially when
it's so easy to just google and see that his
name was attached to something so violent. It really scared
me for the women that were potentially going to be
his bride.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
When you were on The Bachelor, did you feel looked
after by the producers behind the scenes.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
I feel like my time on the second season of
The Bachelor had different kind of stays. There's like the
before you actually go on the show and there was
minimal contact you're actually in the show, and once you're
in production, it's all consuming and it is like an
entire bubble that you cannot escape even if you wanted to, Like,
(11:17):
you've got no phones. We were overseas. If you've got
no phone, how do you get to a plane to
leave the country. We were living out remotely in the
north of Aucklands, so there was no way to actually leave.
You're constantly kind of reinforced about how great it is
that you're here, this is an opportunity, and that you
shouldn't leave. And there was a point where people were leaving,
(11:41):
contestants were leaving, and we were told no one else
is leaving now, like this is that you're here, you
made this decision. I think in terms of being supported
during the show, if something perhaps didn't go well, if
something happened behind the scenes, then you would be rewarded
with perhaps a date or time alone. So that idea
(12:03):
of what is the reward is not actually support or help.
It will help you get further in the show. You
can get more screen time or something. It was a
weird setup, but you could definitely see that if someone
went through something behind the scenes that explains why they
got a date, even if narratively it didn't make sense
in the show why someone got a date. I think
(12:25):
after the show then becomes like a different stage. And
so when you've been enveloped in this experience, for me personally,
it was six and a half weeks of literally everything
that you were doing, every single date, every moment is
for the creation of a show. When you leave the show,
it is completely like so jarring to go back to
(12:46):
actually your home and to see your family again. And
so in terms of support from production, once you go,
it is very much waiting out the time for your
next contractual obligations. So if there are upcoming marketing interviews
that you have to go to I know for me personally,
I did ask for support and it took two weeks
(13:08):
for me to actually talk to someone and I was
awarded one hour with a psychologist. That one hour wasn't enough.
But again this was also in twenty sixteen, and there
has definitely been a lot more awareness now and so
in the last eight years, I could only assume that
production has absolutely taken what people have said on board
(13:32):
and are actively trying to make their productions a safer space.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Well, we've heard some horror stories from over in the UK,
for instance, the Love Island cast about what kind of
support is and isn't given to them after the show airs,
because that's when you get your phone back and you
don't know how you've been edited.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Have you been edited as the villain for example? And
now you've got to face all this barrage of social
media keyboard warriors.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
I'm sure there are a lot of people out there
who can't understand why someone in a position who seems
to have everything could take their own life. But you
know what it's like to have everyone looking at you,
everybody talking about what are the pressures like when you
come out of a show like Love Island in reality.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
You're in such a hire when you leave, and then
to come out and be bombarded with everyone's opinions on
like whatever you do a relationship, what you're wearing, what
you look like, is a lot to cope with.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
That must be incredibly difficult to handle by oneself.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Absolutely, for years afterwards, I would still have strangers recognizing
me and telling me what my PhD thesis was on,
because that became part of the show, part of the
story and the show. Even if myself, as a person
standing in front of them was saying to them, I
assure you, that is not what I was writing about.
(14:52):
That is what the show was saying. That is what
the media was saying around the show. They still would
not believe you, the person in front of them. It
was fascinating from this perspective of why do we trust
what a show is giving us more than an individual.
Why do we trust the media reports around something rather
(15:13):
than an actual person. It doesn't matter how many times
you could say something. That whole way of presenting someone
else's character in a production, there's so much responsibility in that,
and it's tricky. It's so strange because to me, I'm
like my role here at aut is to be talking
(15:34):
through what is the impact and role of media in
our society and to have actually gone through this experience
of I don't understand how I can say the same
thing in twenty three different interviews the exact same way,
and yet I can read twenty three different angles into
what I said. It's quite fascinating, but at the same
time it's quite horrible.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Would you do it again?
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yeah, that's a super crazy question. I would not do
it again. But also because it's eight years later, it's
the kind of thing in your life where you go
back and you go, oh, I see who I am
now as a person because of going through that experience.
And I think one way to think of it is like,
do you regret doing it? If I hadn't have done it,
(16:17):
I would have been eight years later regretting not having tried,
because ultimately, I mean, for me personally, why are went
on a show is like I wanted to find love,
and coming off the back of season one of Art
and Matilda, it absolutely could happen. We're still nine years later,
I guess at this point, following them and the birth
of their children, it's incredible the love that they found
(16:41):
and the chance to actually go on and perhaps get
that that was too good to pass up.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And we've seen a bit of a reality check over
Reality TV in the last year. How there have been
calls for the stars to unionize and lawsuits have been
filed and some upheld over allegations of mistreatment on SAT,
poor conditions of filming, pushback over howe were portrayed.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Does Reality TV need a reset?
Speaker 4 (17:03):
I think Reality TV needs to actually start considering participants
as just as important as the level of technology that
they're using to film that the level of marketing budget
that they have. They need to consider the same importance
of care and creation of the character within the show.
(17:24):
One of the foundations that are fighting for this in
America that you can foundation They're like, people are not
props pretty much, you're just a body. In some shows,
you were just there to physically just deliver the things
in order to make everything else about the show do
really well. But the participant is perhaps the lowest on
(17:47):
the level of priorities. And you know, we do actually
want to know about people, Like when we think about
why society are watching television, why we're watching reality television
in particular, is because we want to know why people decisions,
how are people behaving, and how do we agree or
disagree with their behaviors. We're actually watching the shows for
(18:08):
the participants. We're not watching them because it's got amazing
high quality standards. We're not watching it for anything else
other than we want to be seeing ourselves or we
want to be feeling better about ourselves because of the participants.
It's not just on the producers either. This is on
the audience as well. If there were no participants, there
(18:28):
wouldn't be a show, So let's try and treat them
with a bit more respect.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Thanks for joining us, Rebecca.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzidherld dot co dot z. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Sills and sound engineer Patti Fox. I'm
Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or
wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on Monday
(19:01):
for another look behind the headlines.
Gilda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. There's no
better way to unwind at the end of a long
day of work than binging on reality TV. From the
Bloc to Celebrity Treasure Island, Kiwis have always had a
(00:27):
soft spot.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
For the genre.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Right now, the country is obsessed with Married at First
Sight New Zealand, back for its fourth season after a
five year hiatus, and while we may still be mad
about the genre, a lot has changed for reality TV
since the local version of the international hit debuted in
twenty seventeen. Today on the Front Page, aut University senior
(00:52):
communications lecturer Rebecca to Release joins us to discuss math's
obsession and the changing world of reality TV. Rebecca, you're
a bit of a reality TV expert, hey, when it
comes to your studies, aren't you.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Thanks for putting it that way. That's really kind of you.
I did my PhD thesis on the reality television genre
as a whole and the things that it does and
does well, so yeah, in some ways, I maybe am.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I right to say that you've had first hand experience
as well with this genre.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah, so I was like a year in the first
year of putting together what I would be researching. I
actually appeared on a New Zealand reality show as well,
which one was that I was in season two of
The Bachelor New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So obviously at the moment, now Married at First Sight
New Zealand is airing and people are just absolutely obsessed
with it. It comes off the back of the Australian version,
which is also a huge hit. Here what is it
about maths that captures the audience's attention.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I think it's really interesting because it's come off the
back of the Australian Maths or Merit at First Sight,
where there was so much talk about it, and to
live up to kind of the drama that exists in
maths Australia, it's a big task, but it's definitely taking
on its own way into the maths format, this New
(02:22):
Zealand version. I think there's also different reasons why we
watch the different romance reality shows. So maybe you want
to watch the risky, raunchy Love Island that maybe you
want to see the romance of the Bachelor. But for
maths in particular, we're learning about commitment and we're learning
about those long term relationships. And I think that that's
(02:44):
its own unique way into looking at ourselves but looking
at our society. And so in particular here we've got
what is the society of commitment in alter or? It's
really intriguing and I think we as viewers just want
to know that, we want to understand that.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
On three now week, I have another thing.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Are the couples up for the test?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Jeff Rockett?
Speaker 5 (03:09):
How are you?
Speaker 4 (03:09):
I just don't know what's really married at first Sight
New Zealand stream first on three now.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I mean I've watched Maths for a fair few years
now and I have noticed myself, especially with the Australian
version just the last season, that the experts they're getting
less lenient with things like gas lighting and toxic relationships
and stuff like that. Do you think that coming into
twenty twenty four there is much more of a focus
(03:39):
on healthy relationships over maybe the dramatic launchy ones that
we like to watch.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
And I think with something like Maths, which has been
going for a few years, we're about ten eleven years
after the first one over in Europe now, so there
was a period where the experts weren't calling participants out,
and so because they weren't doing that, the responses from
media who were following the show, from the audiences who
(04:05):
were then commenting on the show, they started to hold
the experts accountable a bit more. And so there's like
a slight shift and actually the experts realizing the audience
wants to see these people being called out, and so
now we can see those same behaviors that we're wanting
as audience members playing out on screen as the experts
(04:27):
talk about those words like being gaslet or the word
recently that we might have learned was the avoidant attachment
style and that didn't even come from one of the
experts this last week. But we're learning the types of
words that we should be looking out for and that
we maybe already recognize. We just need the language of them.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Dating shows have a pretty long history in New Zealand
and around the world.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Why does that subgenre appeal to us so much?
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Or we're all humans like this is one of our
basic needs is to connect to someone else, to have
some type of not necessarily romantic or love connection, but
a connection, and to have that feeling of being seen
by someone else and so while we might have those
reality shows that focus on a skill set or like
(05:16):
it's a competition to get to the end, romance shows
are really something that every single human can relate to,
whether or not we want that form of connection or
if we have a desire for that connection. There has
been research into why audiences choose particular versions of shows
that they're watching, and they found that the values that
(05:39):
the person has in themselves in their own life tends
to inform the shows that they look for. And so
because so many humans have love and connection as this
idea of that's an important value in their own life,
they want to see those values played out on television.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
I guess given these shows do still drop week to
week rather than Netflix, you can binge everything in one weekend.
I often think about the times when you'd be watching
say Er, and everyone goes to work the next day
and remembers when Dr Green died, right, and that's what
everyone was talking about because everyone was watching it the
night before. And if I've dropped any spoilers, it's been
(06:20):
about twenty years.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
Mark Dave.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
This morning, I sent this on so that you might
know who was thinking of you all. I'm hid it.
He appreciated knowing you would remember him well.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
But I mean, I guess that sense of it coming
out every week is something like this really our last
true water cooler shows.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
I guess absolutely. The appointment television. It was something that
television has built into us as viewers from the very beginning.
So even if television was only being broadcast a couple
of hours at nighttime, we would schedule our lives around
making sure we were sitting in front of it. Now
this is generations ago, so this wasn't me personally, but
(07:10):
now I do actually schedule my life around television. And
when I was younger, it was to make sure that
one night of the week you could watch say Er
or Gray's Anatomy or something, as it was broadcast and
you couldn't catch up on streaming. You might have to
wait for the recap the next episode a week later.
We actually schedule our lives around having access to that
(07:32):
information that we can then have conversations the next day.
And so now that we have streaming services where you
can binge twelve episodes over a weekend, it's kind of
counting on everyone being available for that one weekend to
watch the entire thing. In one go. And so when
we go back to these formats that are kind of
(07:55):
drip feeding the content out to us, it forces us
as an audience to be drawn back to how they're
telling us to consume. We can't just leave it until
two nights later because there's two more episodes now, we're
so behind. So being able to put them out at
a specific time on a specific day, it's encouraging the
(08:16):
audiences to actually put in that effort. It's not as
easy as just putting something on the streaming service anymore.
I need to be there at a specific time and place.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Maps New Zealand has returned after a few controversies in
its past, most notably I remember in twenty nineteen Chris
Mansfield and is on screen. Brider actually edited out of
the third season before it went to air after it
was discovered he had domestic charges against him in the US.
What safety measures are there to protect the talent on
(08:57):
these shows?
Speaker 4 (08:58):
That example is really interesting because there was concern about
the wife he was married to, you know, like was
she being put in a safe situation. The idea of
casting these shows and doing checks before someone arrives on
the show, that is a responsibility of production to make
sure that they know everything about someone. There's also that
(09:18):
negotiation from the participant in ensuring that everything is shared
as well. And so while production for that specific example
said that they did the checks they could, but I
mean it doesn't appear if it was in a different
country or something. They do have to rely on the
participant as well. So there's this kind of negotiation between
two parties there as to how a situation like that happens.
(09:41):
And it also happened with f Boy Island. A participant
also hadn't necessarily declared, and there again were issues around
the specific thing that he had been accused of in
a romantic setting. Now, these contestants could have been in
a different type of format, different show that wasn't relying
(10:02):
on their ability to perform in a relationship. They could
have been in a cooking contest. But because these shows
were specifically about being an intimate, vulnerable conversations and settings
like they're physically married and staying in a room together overnight,
there is a duty of care that is required. But
(10:24):
I'm not sure how that could be prevented unless production
and participants are working together on that. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
The thought of being married after a stranger, especially when
it's so easy to just google and see that his
name was attached to something so violent. It really scared
me for the women that were potentially going to be
his bride.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
When you were on The Bachelor, did you feel looked
after by the producers behind the scenes.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
I feel like my time on the second season of
The Bachelor had different kind of stays. There's like the
before you actually go on the show and there was
minimal contact you're actually in the show, and once you're
in production, it's all consuming and it is like an
entire bubble that you cannot escape even if you wanted to, Like,
(11:17):
you've got no phones. We were overseas. If you've got
no phone, how do you get to a plane to
leave the country. We were living out remotely in the
north of Aucklands, so there was no way to actually leave.
You're constantly kind of reinforced about how great it is
that you're here, this is an opportunity, and that you
shouldn't leave. And there was a point where people were leaving,
(11:41):
contestants were leaving, and we were told no one else
is leaving now, like this is that you're here, you
made this decision. I think in terms of being supported
during the show, if something perhaps didn't go well, if
something happened behind the scenes, then you would be rewarded
with perhaps a date or time alone. So that idea
(12:03):
of what is the reward is not actually support or help.
It will help you get further in the show. You
can get more screen time or something. It was a
weird setup, but you could definitely see that if someone
went through something behind the scenes that explains why they
got a date, even if narratively it didn't make sense
in the show why someone got a date. I think
(12:25):
after the show then becomes like a different stage. And
so when you've been enveloped in this experience, for me personally,
it was six and a half weeks of literally everything
that you were doing, every single date, every moment is
for the creation of a show. When you leave the show,
it is completely like so jarring to go back to
(12:46):
actually your home and to see your family again. And
so in terms of support from production, once you go,
it is very much waiting out the time for your
next contractual obligations. So if there are upcoming marketing interviews
that you have to go to I know for me personally,
I did ask for support and it took two weeks
(13:08):
for me to actually talk to someone and I was
awarded one hour with a psychologist. That one hour wasn't enough.
But again this was also in twenty sixteen, and there
has definitely been a lot more awareness now and so
in the last eight years, I could only assume that
production has absolutely taken what people have said on board
(13:32):
and are actively trying to make their productions a safer space.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Well, we've heard some horror stories from over in the UK,
for instance, the Love Island cast about what kind of
support is and isn't given to them after the show airs,
because that's when you get your phone back and you
don't know how you've been edited.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Have you been edited as the villain for example? And
now you've got to face all this barrage of social
media keyboard warriors.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
I'm sure there are a lot of people out there
who can't understand why someone in a position who seems
to have everything could take their own life. But you
know what it's like to have everyone looking at you,
everybody talking about what are the pressures like when you
come out of a show like Love Island in reality.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
You're in such a hire when you leave, and then
to come out and be bombarded with everyone's opinions on
like whatever you do a relationship, what you're wearing, what
you look like, is a lot to cope with.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
That must be incredibly difficult to handle by oneself.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Absolutely, for years afterwards, I would still have strangers recognizing
me and telling me what my PhD thesis was on,
because that became part of the show, part of the
story and the show. Even if myself, as a person
standing in front of them was saying to them, I
assure you, that is not what I was writing about.
(14:52):
That is what the show was saying. That is what
the media was saying around the show. They still would
not believe you, the person in front of them. It
was fascinating from this perspective of why do we trust
what a show is giving us more than an individual.
Why do we trust the media reports around something rather
(15:13):
than an actual person. It doesn't matter how many times
you could say something. That whole way of presenting someone
else's character in a production, there's so much responsibility in that,
and it's tricky. It's so strange because to me, I'm
like my role here at aut is to be talking
(15:34):
through what is the impact and role of media in
our society and to have actually gone through this experience
of I don't understand how I can say the same
thing in twenty three different interviews the exact same way,
and yet I can read twenty three different angles into
what I said. It's quite fascinating, but at the same
time it's quite horrible.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Would you do it again?
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yeah, that's a super crazy question. I would not do
it again. But also because it's eight years later, it's
the kind of thing in your life where you go
back and you go, oh, I see who I am
now as a person because of going through that experience.
And I think one way to think of it is like,
do you regret doing it? If I hadn't have done it,
(16:17):
I would have been eight years later regretting not having tried,
because ultimately, I mean, for me personally, why are went
on a show is like I wanted to find love,
and coming off the back of season one of Art
and Matilda, it absolutely could happen. We're still nine years later,
I guess at this point, following them and the birth
of their children, it's incredible the love that they found
(16:41):
and the chance to actually go on and perhaps get
that that was too good to pass up.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And we've seen a bit of a reality check over
Reality TV in the last year. How there have been
calls for the stars to unionize and lawsuits have been
filed and some upheld over allegations of mistreatment on SAT,
poor conditions of filming, pushback over howe were portrayed.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Does Reality TV need a reset?
Speaker 4 (17:03):
I think Reality TV needs to actually start considering participants
as just as important as the level of technology that
they're using to film that the level of marketing budget
that they have. They need to consider the same importance
of care and creation of the character within the show.
(17:24):
One of the foundations that are fighting for this in
America that you can foundation They're like, people are not
props pretty much, you're just a body. In some shows,
you were just there to physically just deliver the things
in order to make everything else about the show do
really well. But the participant is perhaps the lowest on
(17:47):
the level of priorities. And you know, we do actually
want to know about people, Like when we think about
why society are watching television, why we're watching reality television
in particular, is because we want to know why people decisions,
how are people behaving, and how do we agree or
disagree with their behaviors. We're actually watching the shows for
(18:08):
the participants. We're not watching them because it's got amazing
high quality standards. We're not watching it for anything else
other than we want to be seeing ourselves or we
want to be feeling better about ourselves because of the participants.
It's not just on the producers either. This is on
the audience as well. If there were no participants, there
(18:28):
wouldn't be a show, So let's try and treat them
with a bit more respect.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Thanks for joining us, Rebecca.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzidherld dot co dot z. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Sills and sound engineer Patti Fox. I'm
Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or
wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on Monday
(19:01):
for another look behind the headlines.
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