MAFS Chaos: Icebergs Night Ends in Lockdown

'We're having a few drinks. Won't be big.'

Have there been more famous last words than that?

When the cast of Married At First Sight decided to let their hair down during week two of filming, no one could have expected how things would end.

Fractured friendships. Weekly drug testing. The cast plunged into lockdown.

It started with a text message inviting me along. By this time, I was already well acquainted with most of the cast, but it was still early days.

Gia Fleur slid into my messages asking if I wanted to join her and husband Scott McCristal. I'd be their photographer. It was meant to be a quick catch-up. 

I picked them up from One Global Resorts and drove them to Bondi Icebergs. We took a few snaps overlooking the iconic beach before my phone rang again. 

It was Luke Fourniotis, one of the MAFS grooms.

He asked what I was doing. I told him I was taking photos of Gia and Scott. He said he was spending some much-needed time with his wife Melissa Akbay.

I encouraged him to spend the evening with her, in the hope this might put their rocky relationship back on track. 

I told him I'd pop by their place shortly. Instead, he and Mel turned up at Icebergs.

Then Rebecca Zukowski arrived without her husband Steve Powell. I'm fairly sure he had gone to Melbourne for the weekend because he was still grumpy about Intimacy Week.

Then Danny Hewitt and Bec Zacharia came along. It was the first time I'd had an opportunity to speak to them.

Not long after that, Chris Nield and Brook Crompton walked in. (At this point, she hadn't yet left him for her ex Harry.)

What started as 'a few quiet drinks' quickly escalated into the core cast members getting together. And at first, it was harmless.

We broke the ice. A few shots later, everyone was relaxed. I was having real conversations with Danny, Bec, Gia, Scott, Rebecca, Mel and Luke.

As a reporter, it's always good to get to know the people you're writing about face to face. There's only so much you can get from DMs or voice notes. 

This wasn't my first rodeo joining the cast for a Week #2 session. At this point in the process, the novelty of MAFS hasn't worn off yet, and the real pressure hasn't set in.

That all changed when one bride decided to call another reporter. Several cast members were visibly nervous when they realised he had been invited along.

It wasn't my choice, but I assumed we could all coexist.

And for a while, everything was fine. Until it was time to leave - and the other reporter called in a photographer.

Chris and Danny didn't like that.

I hadn't gone there to ambush anyone. I just wanted to get to know them.

So yes, I tried to quietly usher the group toward a fire exit. But that only made things worse. The paparazzo was annoyed.

Chris became agitated and at one point threatened he would have put the snapper in a headlock had this happened at his wedding.

Danny, half-joking but not entirely, warned the pap he would 'break his camera' if he kept shooting.

The camera survived, but the mood of the evening had changed. What had been light and social now felt tense.

From there, I jumped into an Uber with Scott, Gia, Chris, Brook, Luke and Mel. We headed to a nearby house to continue the gathering away from prying lenses.

By then, it was close to 10pm - the cast curfew. They were all supposed to be back at their apartments at One Global.

Scott was starting to stress. Gia and Brook were having the time of their lives. I attempted to get them to go back to the hotel, but they didn't want a bar of it.

Brook told me she had booked a one-way ticket home and was prepared to quit the show. I wasn't ready for her to leave - she was fun, so I tried to talk her out of it.

Danny and Bec were getting along well.

Mel and Luke, after a rocky start on screen, were finally relaxed together.

But this wasn't what the producers wanted. The last thing they needed was for the cast to bond, laugh and get along. It wouldn't make for good TV.

For weeks, production had been trying to push a narrative of tension between Bec Zacharia and Gia Fleur.

Yes, there was some friction to begin with. But off camera, that tension didn't exist that night. They seemed fine.

By the way, it was during this gathering that Brook allegedly overheard a passing comment by Danny admitting to Gia that she was more his type.

Whether that was actually said, I didn't know. I was at the bar with Luke.

By 11pm, I told Scott to head back to One Global before things escalated further.

Some of them listened, others didn't. The party carried on until midnight. The curfew had been broken by week two.

By Monday morning, word got back to the producers. Furious that they had lost control of the cast, senior management figures intervened.

Gia, Scott, Brook, Chris, Bec, Danny, Luke and Mel were separated from the group as the rest watched. They were given a shocking dressing-down in which they were reminded of their contractual obligations and warned of the consequences.

One insider later told me: 'Production has every reason to be p**sed off. The night completely blew up. The cast can't just disappear without notice.'

The crackdown was immediate. Curfews were tightened. And for the first time in the show's history, weekly drug testing was introduced. Any participant who returned a positive result would immediately be booted off the experiment.

To be clear: I'm not suggesting the cast were doing anything illegal or inappropriate that night. But the producers needed to be seen to be clamping down.

The optics were terrible: a rogue weekend, broken curfew, cast members socialising freely with members of the media.

Whatever 'control' production believed they had in week one was gone by week two.

By the following week, lockdown measures were in place. Production wanted to make sure nothing significant was happening without cameras rolling.

But did the cast listen? That's a story for another day. 

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