What really goes on behind the scenes on The Bachelor Australia
August 30, 2015 1:46am
SIOBHAN DUCK, LUKE DENNEHY, ALICE COSTERSunday Herald Sun
The Bachelor Australia: Emily speaks out
EVEN the most salacious rumours about pale in comparison to what really goes on behind the mansion’s walls.
While the show’s creators go to great lengths to ensure the truth never gets out, sources close to The Bachelor have lifted the lid on the heavy drinking, meagre wages, prison-style tedium and manufactured romance that goes hand-in-hand with being a contestant in the reality dating series.
Melbourne contestant Emily Simms has
claimed she was gagged by production company Shine Endemol after speaking out about the show.
And another bachelorette believes that posts on the official Bachelor Facebook page are removed if they challenge what’s shown on screen.
Simms controversially stormed off the show because she felt producers were manipulating her into appearing to be a princess.
The most recent evictee, Ebru Dallikavak, stuck up for Simms, saying she was an “amazing, beautiful and caring girl” and confirmed “a lot of that has not come out”.
“Unfortunately, she has been portrayed as this year’s villain,” Dallikavak said.
Sources have revealed heavy drinking, meagre wages and manufactured romanceon The Bachelor.
Simms said the manipulation of her “character” went beyond editing.
She said she was physically prevented from joining in a group date in order to give the false impression she was a diva who spent too long preening herself.
Simms said she began drinking heavily to cope with the stress and was “blind drunk” when she stormed off the show.
Simms said alcohol flowed freely on the series, particularly on days when they filmed the infamous rose ceremonies (when women are sent home from the show) at midnight when the women were exhausted.
“We would be standing there for more than an hour, drunk and in painful shoes,” she said.
“Often, we would be hungry and just desperate to go to bed but then we’d be told to go upstairs, put our pyjamas on so they could film another scene.”
Host Osher Gunsberg denied any irresponsible drinking took place on set, saying that everyone who worked on the series took the wellbeing of the contestants “very seriously”.
He said meals were served during the cocktail parties and all the onset waiters were required to have Responsible Service of Alcohol certificates so that they, like anyone who worked behind a bar, would cut off anyone who was getting too tipsy.
“We want people to look their best on the show,” he said. “We have no interest in filming anyone who’s slurring or drunk.”
Gunsberg said a psychologist was available to all the participants for as long as they needed, even after the series had gone to air.
Emily and Sam have a tense chat.
Emily and Sam get up close and personal earlier in the season.
Although Gunsberg said he did not talk to the contestants off camera, he disputed Simms’ account of being unfairly edited on the show.
“I don’t really know Emily but I have spoken to the producers and they say the portrayal of her is pretty accurate,” he said.
“I have worked in reality TV for a long time and I know that what it does is take someone’s personality traits and magnifies them.”
However, Simms’ account of mansion life has been backed by another bachelorette from a previous season, who wished to remain anonymous.
She said she was regularly “plastered” on dates and at the rose ceremonies, adding that some contestants had to be edited out of scenes because they were slurring, swearing and falling off their chairs.
“Before they do something like send intruders in, they sat us down for three hours, feeding us drinks and not telling us what was happening,” she said.
“I blacked out once and couldn’t even remember my conversation with Blake, I was so blind.
“When you’re that drunk and have an emotional reaction your heart beats faster, so it pumps all the grog through your system and you end up really spastic, just sideways.”
From the extravagant dates to the kisses, the jaded bachelorette said everything about the show, except the women’s drunken reactions, was stage-managed by people behind the scenes.
“They are there in your face the whole time and then when it comes ready to kiss they light a million candles, turn the lights down and then all the cameramen will back off into the corners so you feel like you’re alone,” she said. “And then, once they have all the footage they need, they cut you off and say we’re done here.”
Did Heather just give away the ending of The Bachelor?
She said even the catty chats between the ladies are set up.
“It’s all totally prompted,” she laughed.
“They pick which girls they want, mic them up, get them where they want and say, right now chat about whoever is on the date and who is going home in the rose ceremony.”
Before her publicity interviews were cancelled, Simms told the Sunday Herald Sun, that being cut off from her family during the filming had left her feeling vulnerable.
She said she was only allowed one 10-minute phone call every two weeks.
The call had to be conducted on speaker phone with a producer listening in.
“At the start of each call I had to tell them not to ask me any questions about the show or what I had been doing because they would hang the phone up straight away,” she said.
“I would only be allowed one call so I would speak to my mum and then she’d have to call my best friends to tell them what I had said.
“I was only in there for a few weeks but it felt like months.”
The Bachelor, here with frontrunner Heather, doesn’t organise his own dates.
Sam Wood with ‘intruder’ Lana during a lights-out date.
She said TV, newspapers, magazines and radio were also banned while they were filming the show.
But a source close to the production said isolating the women was a good way to intensify the drama.
“They are all so bored,” the insider said.
“They spend all day locked inside together. Any animosity between them gets magnified in that environment. And they’re encouraged to talk about it on camera. They all have cabin fever.”
