Married At First Sight expert Dr Trisha Stratford sensationally quit the series after seven seasons because she ‘felt sick’ about the direction MAFS was heading in.
The New Zealand-born, Sydney-based clinical neuro-psychotherapist passed away in 2023, aged 72.
MAFS fans have resurfaced Trisha’s chilling warning this week after the state’s top workplace safety watchdog and the NSW Police launched investigations into the show.
The two investigations were launched after groom Paul Antoine, 31, admitted he punched a hole in the wall in rage during an argument with his bride Carine Maribile.
Trisha, who was replaced by sexologist Alessandra Rampolla in 2021, gave just one interview about why she really quit the reality TV juggernaut that started as ‘an observational documentary’.
Trisha claimed the participants selected for season six and seven were ‘so outrageous’ and ‘outside the norm’ that it ‘wasn’t what she had signed up for’.
Married At First Sight viewers have resurfaced an interview that former relationship expert Dr. Trisha Stratford gave about why she felt she had to quit the show in 2021, with the psychotherapist saying she could not ‘compromise her professional and personal standards’
Dr. Trisha Stratford appeared as a relationship expert on Married At First Sight Australia alongside Mel Schilling (left) and John Aitken (right) from season one to season seven
‘By the end, I couldn’t compromise my professional and personal standards because there were participants on the show who I felt shouldn’t have been there,’ she told NZ Woman’s Day.
‘At a couple of those dinner parties, I felt sick. I felt in my guts that this wasn’t what I’d want to be watching at home on TV.’
Trisha appeared on MAFS alongside John Aitken, a former cricketer who studied clinical psychology for seven years, and Australian dating coach Mel Schilling.
In 2018, MAFS officially renamed the show’s three ‘psychologists’ to ‘relationship experts’.
After she quit, Trisha confessed she wasn’t comfortable being a figurehead for psycho-therapy on MAFS, when producers would not listen to her pre-casting assessments.
‘If someone gets through the critical selection process when we say we don’t want them on the show because they’re quite fragile psychologically, they’re not going to do well during or after the show,’ she said.
The former war correspondent even likened the trauma created on MAFS to ‘a war zone.’
Australia’s top-rating reality TV show was originally marketed as an observational documentary.
Trisha Stratford, who died in 2023 aged 72, was a clinical neuro-psychotherapist and said ‘by the end’ the MAFS dinner parties made her ‘feel sick’
‘Big egos became the norm’ on MAFS, Trisha said in 2020. The former expert worried that participants she could see were too ‘psychologically fragile’ for the show were being cast. Pictured: Paul Antoine and Carina Mirabile and Awhina Rutene and Adrian
(L-R) MAFS relationship experts Dr Trisha Stratford, John Aitken, and Mel Schilling attend the 60th annual Logie Awards in 2018
‘We had genuine people and we really were testing all those psychological and scientific theories of attraction,’ Trisha said.
‘Then it got supersized, a bit like MasterChef, into what we know as MAFS now. The participants we got in seasons six and seven were so outrageous and outside the norm that it wasn’t what I signed up for.’
‘Big egos became the norm,’ she said.
‘We got participants who came on the show to boost their Instagram numbers.
‘MAFS gives you permission to act out your shadow side, but there were no boundaries with those participants.
‘People watch in the millions – it’s the highest-rating show in Australia – so it was a big call to leave.
‘But did people watch the last two seasons to learn about relationships, or to see people being outrageous?
”We all like to see people making fools of themselves because we sit there going, “Well. I’m better than that!”‘
As fans, commentators, and MAFS contestants (past and present), question what duty of care MAFS producers have to their brides and grooms, Trisha’s words help to explain how we ended up here.
‘MAFS turned into a game of survival,’ she said. ‘I wanted to help the participants the best I could.
‘Even though they were outrageous, they’re still human beings and falling in love is never rational anyway.
‘They’re under enormous pressure with their partner, everyone else on the show and the public. It’s difficult. Survival mechanisms set in.’
In a statement on the show’s Instagram account, the relationship expert announced she was ‘taking a step back from the series to focus on her writing, research and neuropsychotherapy’ in September 2020.
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