‘Married at First Sight’: Chris Coelen Once Shared Some Contestants Were Angry With the Twist
Married at First Sight was another one of Chris Coelen’s hit reality shows. But when the series recruited its first batch of contestants, they all had very mixed emotions regarding the show’s twist.
How contestants reacted to the ‘Marriage at First Sight’ twist
Contestants may know what’s in store now when they end up on Married at First Sight. The first season took place almost a decade ago, where audiences saw complete strangers marrying each other as soon as they met. The series would follow these newlyweds and see which marriages would last, and which wouldn’t.
But at the show’s inception, Coelen made a point to hide its true premise from its contestants.
“We pretty much told them everything except for the fact that they would meet their husband or wife at the altar and see them for the very first time there,” Coelen once told Reality Blurred. “We didn’t want to tell people what the show was about [because] we wanted to find people who were serious about wanting to be in a relationship, were serious about wanting to find love who had enough previous relationship experience that they had been through heartbreak, perhaps several times, but still had enough positivity about relationships and love that they really were ready to find it. We wanted it to work.”
How ‘Married at First Sight’ earned back the cast’s trust
When the twist was finally revealed to the chosen couples, Coelen described it as a chaotic experience.
“People were stunned by that. Some people got angry, some people laughed, some people were just dumbfounded,” he said. “We had to tell them why we did the casting this way. We thought if we told people, from the beginning … the the kinds of people who we would attract are people, as they would say on The Bachelor, are in it for the wrong reasons. We thought we would attract people who were wannabes, people who wanted to be on television, people who want to be famous, people who want a career, not people who really want to find love.”
‘Married at First Sight’ producers had to earn the trust of the cast back
Coelen explained that he and the show’s producers use a rigorous and thorough process to cast the show’s couples. The team carefully reads through applications sent by Married at First Sight hopefuls. But Coelen also shared they send a casting team to specific areas to potentially recruit singles who might fit the show.
Over the course of the series, viewers have seen that sometimes this process works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
“There’s no debate. The experts always say there is no exact science and no guarantees, but it is based on a high degree of research,” Coelen told People in a 2015 interview,
