Production is currently underway for the upcoming twelfth season of Married At First Sight with filming set to commence in Sydney this month. While next year’s season is already tipped to be bigger and better than ever before, things haven’t gotten off to the smoothest start.
A show insider tells Yahoo Lifestyle that production has faced a series of setbacks over the past month which has caused major filming delays. According to our source, there have been several last-minute cast changes as participants have either dropped out or been axed for having “the wrong intentions” and being there solely to promote themselves.
Two weeks ago, one anonymous groom even took to the unofficial Married At First Sight Australia subreddit to boast of their involvement in the show and offered to leak storylines once filming kicked off. Yahoo Lifestyle understands this resulted in an “investigation” to find the aspiring influencer and remove them from the show.
Interestingly, the Reddit thread where they detailed the various stages of the casting process and their interactions with the relationship experts has since been deleted.
“Every year as the show gets bigger it gets harder to weed out the applicants with the wrong intentions,” a source tells us.
“There are too many influencers and aspiring OnlyFans crea tors seeing the experiment as the easiest way to promote themselves. This year casting really above and beyond to find a mix of interesting people with all kinds of different backgrounds from across Australia inspired by Lucinda Light’s popularity.”
Huge casting change for MAFS 2025
Yahoo Lifestyle revealed in May that producers were “actively pursuing” transgender and gender-diverse participants to star in the Australian version of the reality series for the first time.
The lengthy application process for season 12 featured an entire section dedicated to quizzing potential cast members if they’d ever been in a relationship with someone who identifies as transgender or non-binary, and if they would be open to being matched with someone who is.
A source connected to the show told Yahoo Lifestyle that the Australian producers had been inspired by MAFS UK, who cast the reality show’s first-ever trans participant Ella Morgan last year.
“Married At First Sight UK led the way last year by casting an openly trans bride, which caused huge discussion and discourse all around the world,” the source shared. “Producers are now under immense pressure to raise the bar on our version to keep the format fresh.”
As the news was then discussed and debated across social media, members of the trans community issued a plea to producers of the social experiment not to sensationalise the inclusion of any transgender cast members, and to treat their storylines “sensitively”.
Zaylee Doll, a Sydney-based transgender influencer and activist, told Yahoo Lifestyle: “I believe MAFS has a responsibility when casting trans people. The media usually feed off the negative because that’s what gets views and attention so I do believe they could portray a trans participant this way, but [this just perpetuates hate].”
The influencer explained that trans people already have to “forever defend themselves” from prejudice, misconceptions and transphobia without the potential of Australia’s biggest reality show fuelling even more negativity.