On Monday morning, Domenica Calarco and Ella Ding invited Married At First Sight villain Harrison Boon onto their Sit With Us podcast to discuss his portrayal on the show and his relationship with his on-screen wife Bronte Schofield. Speaking with the former MAFS
the walking red flagHere, we’ve compiled all the bombshells from the chat so far.
1. Harrison hated himself when he watched the episodes back
stars, he got pretty candid and what he had to say didn’t paint Bronte in the best light. Shocker.
But despite the negative opinion that many fans of the show already had of Harrison, the chat left co-host Domenica speechless.
“I’m never really speechless but I’ll tell you what guys, my mind is reeling,” she said, following their interview.
Coming from someone who has never shied away from calling out shitty behaviour – including Harrison’s – you’ve got to admit, it’s pretty intriguing.
While only part one of the two-part series is available, there was a lot to be learnt about the enigma within the 55 minute episode.
As he watched with the rest of the country, Harrison admitted that he didn’t like what he saw on screen.
“Watching as a viewer, I hate myself on the show,” he revealed. “I’m like, this guy is a gaslighting narcissist, doesn’t take any accountability. But you haven’t seen so much.”
Harrison said only a fraction of what was filmed made it into the final cut of the series, making him out to be the worst version of himself.
While he acknowledges that he displayed narcissistic tendencies coming on the show, he puts much of his attitude down to the years he spent working as a stripper for several years.
“When you do that job, especially as a male, it really becomes kind of, like, your identity. You take on a certain persona. You think you’re God’s gift,” he shared.
“I think in a way people think that’s a byproduct of doing that job but it’s not, you have to be that way. When you go in to, like, a hens party, chicks want a ripped, super confident alpha male. It kind of develops. That job, in itself, develops some narcissism.”
Co-host Ella agreed, saying that after doing it for so long those traits are “a part of who you are as much as you may not want it to be”.
I don’t doubt that stripping for so long during his early 20s had an impact on Harrison’s self-worth and the way he conducted himself.
I also believe that we only saw a fraction of footage of Harrison that shaped our perspective of who he is but to me this excuse still feels like a cop-out. We all have the power to be self-aware and change our negative behaviours.
Harrison alleged that the editing is all from Bronte’s perspective, minimising the issues he had within the relationship and controlling the narrative.
“I think anything that humanised me or showed my funny side, or any depth to me as a person was completely edited out,” he said.
One example of this was during the explosive dinner party when Bronte walked out, devastated that he called off their relationship via text. Harrison said her tears were because he called her out for all the lies she’d told through the experiment, and alleged that she then came clean, admitting to those lies in front of everyone. However, this didn’t make it into the final cut like he thought it would.
“We don’t see any of that. Like we don’t see any of the lying, any of her gaslighting me, none of it. It’s all been cut,” he explained. “The truth is actually more entertaining than the editing.”
“I tried to tell everyone. This woman is gaslighting the shit out of me. I’m in a coercive controlled relationship. I’m the one being lied to constantly.”
“But if you watch the show now, knowing what we know that’s been leaked to the media, you will clearly see a relationship where I am the one being coercively controlled, I am the one being gaslit.”
Look, is no joke.
By definition, coercive control is a pattern of controlling and manipulative behaviours within a relationship. It can include gaslighting among other forms of manipulation. While it’s a very real thing experienced by both men and women, some fans of claim that these terms are thrown around too flippantly by contestants on the show. Whereas others think that showcasing this behaviour on screen can help others identify the signs in their own lives.
Surprisingly, despite showing signs of gaslighting and manipulative behaviour himself, Harrison agrees with the latter.
“The good thing is, it does start the conversation. Women can come forward and say, ‘I’ve been in an abusive relationship or a coercive control relationship or whatever it happens to be with a guy that did that to me. And they’re doing that based on the edit of the show and I actually think that’s amazing because this show serves as a sounding board to society where people can say, ‘I’ve had that happened to me’.”
Harrison explained that during the honeymoon, he believed that Bronte was amping up her reactions for the cameras which heavily contributed to his bad edit on the show.
“So many arguments we had on the honeymoon where I could tell she was doing it for the cameras. You don’t have a normal conversation with someone and then they flip out and fucking act like the world is ending,” he said.
“I mean for us, that was obvious at times when she was clearly putting it on for the cameras. It was very obvious,” Ella said, to which Dom replied “oh, fucking big time.”
Harrison was pretty surprised that Dom and Ella agreed with him, too.
“This is the first time i’ve ever had that validated. And I can’t believe it’s coming from you two,” he said.
In case you missed it, Bronte and Harrison’s relationship has been rife with text-related drama. The first batch of proved that Bronte knew about Harrison and his relationship with former contestant before going on the show. The alluded to how she wanted to stay right up to final vows, despite the state of their relationship.
As the voice memos were played out during the episode, Harrison chimed in, alleging that on day two of the honeymoon, Bronte asked him in private whether he’d consider just being friends and playing it up for the cameras. Just like she suggested in the leaked voice memos.
Intimacy was a talking point between Harrison and Bronte on the show.
Harrison told Domenica and Ella that during the two times he was intimate with Bronte, he felt pressure to perform and live up to his “big alpha male” portrayal. He claimed that he couldn’t go through with it because he “didn’t trust her”.
“I just wasn’t into it. Do you want to know what the core issue was? I didn’t trust her. Something was off, I just never really trusted Bronte and that was the core of our relationship issue,” he said.
Hmm. By all means consent is king and can be revoked at any time during a sexual encounter. But there’s something about Harrison using their sex life as yet another way to discredit Bronte that feels a little bit icky if you ask me.
According to Harrison, most of the self-centred shit he said on air was actually a joke. And although most of his punchlines didn’t go down well, or even make anyone laugh, there was one “obviously sarcastic” joke that he was absolutely dreading to hear back.
“ [] asked the question ‘why didn’t you take it seriously coming into the show?’ and I said, ‘well Mel, I’ve been cast for another show before this and it fell through and they said the reason they didn’t pick me was because I was too ruggedly handsome and masculine’. And I said, ‘Mel, Unfortunately that’s something I have to live with’.”
“Aren’t you glad that didn’t air?” Ella quipped. Count your lucky stars for that one, king.
In conclusion, it’s clear that Harrison totally understands why we all think he’s a wanker from his portrayal on the show. And hey, I’ve got to give him credit for being more self-aware than I thought.
While it was fascinating to hear two people who’d been on previous seasons of the show relate to Harrison’s narrative and discredit Bronte’s, it’s important to remember there are two sides to every story.
Because while we can all agree that the edit plays a big part in how we understand and relate to these characters on-screen, ultimately you need to say the shit for it to make it into the episode.
During his time on, we’ve seen Harrison do a lot of problematic things and although this chat proves he can be a pretty slick talker, we need to take it with a grain of salt.
Especially when Bronte isn’t there to defend herself.
Well, that’s all we have for now, folks.
Stay tuned for all the tea released in Teary Tell-All with Harrison Boon (Part 2) next week.
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