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MAFS' Melinda reveals why she was 'so upset' over her edit: 'Holy s**t'
The season 10 bride says she was 'freaking out' when she watched her wedding on TV.
Married At First Sight’s Melinda Willis has opened up about her experience on the reality show and revealed why she is “so upset” with the way she was portrayed on screen.
During an Instagram Q&A this week, the 32-year-old CEO was asked about the first time she met her partner Layton Mills at their wedding and how she felt about her controversial ‘edit’.
Melinda, who received backlash online during the episode for saying Layton was “punching” and she would “swipe left” in the real world, admitted she was “shocked” when she watched the wedding on TV.
“I was like, ‘Holy s**t, I’m the villain. How am I the villain?’,” she recalled. “I was freaking out and I was starting to prepare myself.
“And then I remember going onto Twitter and there were just thousands of hate [comments]. You guys wanted me off this earth, it was not pleasant. And because I am such a nice, genuine person, it rocked my heart and my soul.”
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Melinda went on to say that she cancelled all of her work appointments and meetings for the following day and stayed in bed because she was “feeling so down”.
“It was hard to just pull it together because secretly and internally I was rocked,” she shared. “That is how intense the comments can really affect a human.
“Because you go on here and you think, ‘Oh, who cares if people don't like me and they say something bad, I don't know them, I'm just going to shut that out’, but it's impossible. You can shut it out in your mind, but it bypasses into your soul.”
'All my walls went up'
Speaking about her awkward first interactions with Layton at their wedding, Melinda explained that her frosty behaviour had to do with her “trust issues”.
“Before I started walking down the aisle, everything just went so fast and I don't remember all of it, but I just remember thinking, ‘This guy on the other end, he is not here for the right reasons, he’s gonna be here for the bulk sex opportunities, that’s why the guys come on the show’,” she shared.
“I started to just get in my head, all my walls went up. And I was like, I don't know this guy from a bar soap, I have to go live with him, I have to be with him for 10 weeks. I was full freak out. I was like, I need to look at every single thing I can to not like this guy at first because I need to make sure he's a good guy and he's not gonna pull the wool over my eyes for a TV show.”
She added that the wedding was actually a “really good day” and all of their friends and family got along and agreed they were a great match, despite what was portrayed on TV.
“The camera captures the essence of the room and I didn’t have the initial spark so I guess that’s what you saw magnified,” she said.
'I never want to watch it again'
Despite copping backlash online, Melinda said the biggest reason why she is upset over the ‘edit’ is that she was hoping the wedding video would be a nice memory of when she and Layton first met that she would have forever.
“I was like, if we have children we can show them and I was really looking forward to that really special video, and it wasn't special and I never want to watch it again,” she said.
“I think that's what rocked me the most. I was pretty hysterical because I was like, that's the day we met and it's horrible. I cannot watch this again. This makes me sick to my gut and I felt so s**t watching that.”
Despite the rocky start to their relationship, Melinda and Layton ended up becoming one of the two success stories to come out of this year’s season of MAFS alongside Tahnee Cook and Ollie Skelton.
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