MAFS’ Madeleine explains truth behind the ‘cow scene’

Go behind the edit of Married At First Sight Australia season 11 with special guest Madeleine Maxwell.

Video transcript

- The casting is just a lot of contacts removed. Look, I've been a vegan vegetarian for like on and off for over six, seven years, so that was also a conversation that I'd had in the car the day prior to that scene taking place with Ash and the producer. So we were driving down slaughterhouse road, and it came up because, obviously, we're talking about abattoirs and diet and all that stuff.

And at the time, I was on medication for my skin, and I needed healing happening really quickly, so I was eating meat not, red meat but meat, and so it was a topic of conversation that had me also really aware that I was about to be with nature, with cows, with that kind of thing, and that connection probably would come back up again.

Yeah, so when I-- we had dinner, and that was just a big slab of meat that came out. No potatoes; no nothing on the side. It was just huge. It was just evident-- it was a pig on a spit. And for me, that was-- my sister's been an animal activist for a long time as well, so this is in my family. It's important to me so.

So yeah, it's one of those things where I had a lot of shame like the next day going into that scene. Not only did I just do a voxie before that was completely unrelated to the cows, but it was about a relationship that already had me extremely emotional.

I go into the paddock crying because of that particular voxie, and then it just so happens that voxie was about guilt, about shame, about this relationship. And then, when I see the cows after what I did the night before, it's feeding into that idea. It's feeding into that guilt and shame that I feel in the voxie prior. And then it's like coming out with the cows as well.

So for me, I was watching that. I'm like, oh my god, this seems so full on. But when you're unearthing so much about love and about what you desire and about what you've done in the past that may or may not be a good choice or whatever, it's like, yeah, I think all of that plays into such stupid scenes like that on Married at First Sight.

It's just they're going to market it as, I guess, "funny or weird" or because I'm a medium, but yeah, it was actually a lot deeper to me. And look, I will say this. There's a voxie in between where I go, and I like explode, I'm like I'm [BLEEP] dying, which was completely unrelated to cows. It was about the relationship, once again, in the voxie prior. So it had nothing to do with me upset that I was eating meat. It was an explosion of just like they're pushing on a relationship topic that I don't want to go into.

And I'm aware that I'm really emotional that day, and I'm aware what it will look like on camera, so that's why I'm saying I'm just so fucking annoying because I can't stop crying about this other topic. So yeah, it's yeah, there's a lot that goes into it. People just think I'm just about [BLEEP] crazy. But you know, that too, but also not.