MAFS’ Stephen shares unconventional way he was cast on the show

Married At First Sight intruder Stephen Stewart had a brief appearance on this year's season where he was partnered with Michael Felix after Michael's first match pulled out of the experiment before the weddings.

Stephen, who hails from Western Australia, had a very last-minute call-up to appear on the show and was given two weeks' notice to pause his life in order to go marry a stranger after being scouted on social media.

Speaking to Yahoo Lifestyle's podcast Behind The Edit, Stephen revealed the strange process involved in how he wound up on our TV screens.

"I was scouted through Instagram," he said. "I had two weeks from when I was told 'yep it's happening' to when I was at the altar getting married."

Stephen then said he had first been messaged on Instagram six weeks before he started filming, explaining that he had been reached out to then the message chain went cold.

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"It was probably six weeks before anything happened, I was contacted and told, 'Would you be interested, we're pretty keen on you', and I was apprehensive at that point," he shared.

"I'd never seen the show, I was travelling with my best mate at the time and she's very logical and she was like, 'No it's a bad idea, don't do it', so initially I was not so keen, and then I didn't hear from them for four weeks."

Stephen said the delay in communication plus the thinking time made him reconsider his initial hesitations.

"In that time I got super keen over that period and two weeks before it actually started they contacted me like, 'Hey are you still single, because if you are, we've got a match,' and it just snowballed from there."

"The little gap I had where I didn't hear from them, I did think about it and I was super keen to find a relationship and the way it was pitched to me was so good," he continued.

"Like 'you don't want to live over East but what if your perfect match is there and we can find that for you?' That's a pretty appealing concept."

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He went on to elaborate on his initial reservations after he found out he was Michael's second pairing.

"I definitely did think that the way my process for the show happened was very typical, but I came to learn it's not at all," he said. "I think what rattled me so much was that they did find me initially for Michael, and when I spoke to the matchmaker and they asked what I like in a partner, they did ghost me for that period, so they obviously thought I wasn't a great match.

"And then when I learned his match did pull out, and last minute they asked if I was free, that's when I was kind of like 'oh s***' like have I been put in here because you needed someone for Michael?"

Listen to Stephen's full episode of Behind The Edit here.

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