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The Block’s Omar and Oz slam bizarre rumour: 'Who cares?'
The Block contestants Omar and Oz have quickly become fan favourites on the latest series, with many hoping that they walk away with the grand prize.
However, reality TV stars often find themselves copping unfair criticism and backlash as their public profile grows.
In early October, So Dramatic! claimed Omar and Oz ‘fled the country’ after social media criticism ‘hit new heights’.
This came after the pair hit back at Foreman Dan, who had told them their work was 'dodgy', informing the foreman that this could feed into racist stereotypes.
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In an exclusive chat with Yahoo Lifestyle, the down-to-earth contestants burst out laughing when reminded of the bizarre rumour.
“That’s funny. That was pretty funny when we did see it at the time,” Omar starts, before adding the pair were simply on holiday in Bali.
“It’s alright, whatever, who cares? They can say what they want!” he says.
When we spoke to the pair, Omar was still over in Bali while Oz had returned back to Sydney.
“We asked Channel Nine, ‘Can we go for a nice two-week holiday with the family?’. They let us know when we [could] go, and we went. We enjoyed it, it was pretty good,” Oz tells us.
‘Social media can be vicious’
The contestants say they went into The Block expecting backlash, but felt that it was important to represent their culture and religion on Australian prime-time TV.
“We always know that social media and whatnot can be very vicious and feisty at times. We try to stay off it as much as possible but we do get the old comments and stuff that gets sent to us,” Omar says.
While acknowledging that backlash is ‘always going to happen’, the star says he wanted the show to reflect Australia’s multicultural society.
The pair hope that people start becoming ‘welcoming’ towards everybody in Australia and having more diversity on TV can push society in that direction.
“These little steps can go a long way. We don’t want the next generations to go through anything that we went through,” he adds.
‘Representing the Muslim community’
Omar and Oz are thrilled to have such a big platform to ‘represent’ the Muslim community, and hope to inspire young children.
“There’s a lot of kids out there that probably don’t see themselves having opportunities, and Oz and I being on The Block we felt as though we could kind of push them in that direction,” Omar says.
Their friends and family have loved their time on the show, with everybody gathering to watch the episodes every week.
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“[Our family] are happy and surprised, and amazed [by our] beautiful home that Omar and I have built,” Oz adds
“Everybody is giving us good feedback, the thumbs up and [a] pat on the back [for] how we definitely represented the Muslim community.”
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