Married at First Sight groom Jesse Burford has opened up about his experience on the show and his doomed marriage to Claire Nomarhas.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, the Perth marriage celebrant, 30, revealed what really happened after his bride Claire, 31, kissed fellow groom Adam Seed during a wild night out, saying he begged producers to let him leave the show but they wouldn’t allow it.
‘You can’t just walk off set. You can’t just leave the apartments and catch your own flight. You can’t do that. They wave the contract in your face,’ he said.
‘I don’t even know if I’m even allowed to be saying this right now, but I just tried my best and I said, once I found out about the kiss, and we went to the dinner party that weekend and I said to Claire, ‘I want to go home, I’m done with this. I want to go back to Perth”.
‘The commitment ceremony was the night after, and she still writes ‘stay’, and that still weighs on me.’
Married at First Sight groom Jesse Burford, 30, (pictured) has opened up about his experience on the show and his marriage to Claire Nomarhas
‘Like, if you really wanted to make it up to me, why didn’t you honour my request? It wasn’t a demand. I wanted to go home.’
Jesse said he believes Claire kept writing ‘stay’ at the commitment ceremonies to ‘look after herself’.
‘Why couldn’t you honour me like that? Why did you make me stay and I just can’t shake that she was doing it to look after herself and it’s not just this random thought that’s in my head – there’s other things that happened that back that thought up.’
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, the Perth marriage celebrant, 30, revealed what really happened after his bride Claire, 31, (right) kissed fellow groom Adam Seed during a wild night out, saying he begged producers to let him leave the show but they wouldn’t allow it
Jesse believes that Claire convinced him to stay because she needed a ‘redemption arc’.
He also thinks that she was pressured by producers to finally confessing to cheating.
Shocking truth behind Claire’s angelic edit:
In the explosive interview, Jesse revealed he was ‘shocked’ to see how their tumultuous relationship played out on screen, with Claire being portrayed as an angel, despite her ‘crazy stuff’ on set, such as ‘cheating’ and ‘gaslighting’.
Jesse admitted he assumed he wouldn’t receive a ‘villain’ edit while filming, and was dismayed to discover his assumptions were completely wrong when the show went to air.
n the explosive interview, Jesse revealed he was ‘shocked’ to see how their tumultuous relationship played out on screen, with Claire being portrayed as an angel, despite her ‘crazy stuff’ on set, such as ‘cheating’ and ‘gaslighting’
‘I was shocked watching our relationship play out on screen. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I don’t have to worry one bit about if I’m going to be a villain, because [Claire] just said some crazy stuff.’
‘And there I am watching our honeymoon six months later, and they’re showing none of it!’
Although Jesse didn’t witness any favouritism from production firsthand, he said he felt a ‘weird sixth sense that something didn’t feel right’ during filming.
‘For some reason they chose her to be the angel of the season’, he said.
‘[Claire] is a super villain on a silver platter, and they’re like, ‘No, we’ll take care of her.’ It’s almost criminal. The imbalance and the injustice, I can’t even explain it to you, man,’ he complained.
Jesse said he struggled to watch the show back, particularly as he didn’t have a support system to help him cope emotionally, nor anyone who could empathise with his experience.
Jesse explains that he stopped watching the show after episode four due to the way it portrayed him as a ‘misogynist’, while neglecting to show Claire’s bad behaviour on the honeymoon
Why Jesse stopped watching MAFS:
Jesse explains that he stopped watching the show after episode four due to the way it portrayed him as a ‘misogynist’, while neglecting to show Claire’s bad behaviour on the honeymoon.
‘I had a bunch of friends text me and say, ‘Hey, hope you’re doing okay’.
‘But you know, of the 100% that I’m experiencing, text messages from your friends, as much as I appreciate and am grateful for them, really only reduce my suffering by a very small amount, no one can truly empathise with my experience.’
Jesse also lifted the lid on a crucial moment during filming that never made it to air
‘And and that goes as far as even the cast members, because none of them went through a cheating scandal, was denied an opportunity to leave and was pressured by production to forgive and continue and had suspicions that their partner isn’t here for the right reasons.’
‘You know, it was so hard to watch this back. And mentally I absolutely struggled. I actually stopped watching after the first four episodes.’
Explosive moment you didn’t see on TV:
Jesse also lifted the lid on a crucial moment during filming that never made it to air.
‘It was obvious between production and myself and Claire that we’re just pretty much mates on the honeymoon and there’s no real romance,’ he explained.
‘I was the first to kind of bring that up with Claire [to start] what I was hoping to be a conversation.’
‘[I said] ‘Let’s see what we can do to enhance the romance here’. It was met with complete defence. And just honestly, she just got really angry in that moment.’
‘She got very defensive and very combative. She even accused me of gaslighting her because I said, ‘Why are you getting so angry about this?Like, there’s not much romance here. Let’s see what we can do about it.”
‘And she says ‘why are you getting defensive?’ And she’s like, ‘I’m not getting defensive. You’re gaslighting me.”
‘Which, how ironic is that? Yeah. How ironic is that? She would accuse me of gaslighting her. I’m going insane.’
Married At First Sight continues on Channel Nine on Sunday at 7pm
Married At First Sight continues on Channel Nine on Sunday at 7pm