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MasterChef: Matt Preston worried he 'should have stayed'
Former MasterChef judge Matt Preston has opened up about finally moving on from his time on the hit Channel 10 show.
While he said he has no regrets about the move, in an interview with Stellar, Matt has revealed there were some ‘dark moments’ where he wondered whether he had made the right decision.
“There were definite dark moments when I sat there and said to myself, 'What have I done?' Have I made the right decision? Should I have taken the money and the safe option and stayed?,” he told the publication.
Matt also said that despite some of the rumours surround the trio’s exit from the show after 11 years, contract negotiations stalled because they couldn’t agree on the terms - not because of money.
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Still seeing himself predominantly as a ‘food writer’, Matt explained the show’s lengthy filming schedule left little time for other challenges.
“We always said that we would stay together or go together,” Matt added about fellow former judges Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris.
In the end Matt asked himself whether leaving the show was “the worst thing that could happen career wise”.
“And the answer was no,” he added.
Of course, it didn’t take long for a new opportunity to come knocking with Matt Preston set to line up alongside Gary Mehigan again, as well as Manu Feildel, on Channel Seven’s new cooking series Plate of Origin.
The show will see teams of cooks from diverse cultural backgrounds compete to see which of their chosen cuisines is the best.
Matt was quick to jump on the “opportunity to make a show that didn’t take nine months of [his] life”.
Like many other Aussie TV shows, production of Plate of Origin was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and as a result, the number of episodes had to be reduced to 10.
“We had to modify what we were doing in order to get something to air. We are quite happy with the way it has worked out,” Seven’s director of network programming Angus Ross told Mediaweek in June.
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