MAFS star confirms major rumour about wedding speeches after disaster moment
EXCLUSIVE: Melinda Willis weighs in on the ‘worst wedding speech’ of all time.
Married At First Sight viewers were left stunned during Monday night’s premiere when Tim Calwell’s best man Ben delivered what has since been described as the “worst wedding speech” of all time.
Ben said in his speech that he wasn’t surprised Tim was partaking in the social experiment because he is a “man of science” and loves conducting experiments.
“Experiment 551 - romance at high speed. Is road-h*ad safe?” he remarked to the shocked audience of family and friends.
“Experiment 552 - is it ok to get h*ad in the ER and you’re here now anyway? That was the following experiment, by the way.”
While the episode only showed a snippet of Ben’s controversial speech, he shared the full speech with So Dramatic! and claimed both the bride Sara Mesa and the crowd responded “so well” to what he had said.
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However, an insider who attended the wedding tells Yahoo Lifestyle that this is far from the truth and Ben’s speech was “10 times worse” than what was shown in the edit and included “so many misogynistic, sexist and dehumanising comments”.
“We were all shocked and mortified by his foul remarks, there was absolutely no one laughing with him,” they add.
The insider went on to say that there were a handful of other speeches made at Tim and Sara’s wedding, but only Ben’s aired on TV.
“Sara’s maid of honour read out a heartfelt speech from her brother who lives overseas and wasn’t able to make it, and her other bridesmaid made a beautiful speech about how incredibly loyal, loving and resilient Sara is,” they detail.
“Tim also did a speech that was extremely unprepared, he basically did it off the cuff fumbling over his words. It was so disappointing to see that the bride’s side had put so much thought and consideration into their speeches but Tim’s was just slapped together last minute.”
Melinda Willis shares exclusive details about MAFS weddings
Speaking about the best man’s speech on Yahoo Australia's Behind The Edit podcast, season 10 bride Melinda Willis shared an interesting insight into what airs on TV.
“All the bad things that you see on MAFS that just have you on the edge of your seat being like, ‘Is that real?’, generally it’s so much worse and [the producers] had to cut it,” she revealed.
“I will say, a lot of our dinner parties were so much worse. I think some of the villains got off really easily, for sure… With [the best man speech], I reckon they took it right to the line until viewers are going to be like, ‘How did you let that happen?’.
Melinda also confirmed that producers check all of the wedding speeches in advance and have the power to make any changes they want.
“You send your speech and your vows and everything and then [the producers] will come back and they’ll edit a few things,” she detailed.
“They’ll recommend some edits in a few areas, you’ll go back again, and that’s when you can try and see, ‘Ok, what’s my character? Do they want me to be sweet, feisty?’. But generally, when it comes to the vows and the speech, you’re putting in a bit of everything and then they choose what obviously gets shown.
“Mine was very heartfelt and it was very, very similar to Layton’s - it was almost the same. But what they showed of mine was just a part of me going, ‘I, I, I, I, I’.”
Subscribe to Yahoo Australia's Behind The Edit and listen to the full interview with Melinda Willis here.
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