Why Did Ash And Madeleine Leave MAFS Australia?

25 March 2024, 19:35

The pair only survived the social experiment for one week, but their circumstances of their departure were shady. Why did Ash and Madeleine actually leave MAFS Australia?

Married At First Sight contestants Ash and Madeleine only joined the experiment half way through the season as intruders and yet within a week, they chosen to leave.

But something was unusual about the way the couple left the show that made fans think perhaps there’s more than meets the eye and something might have happened behind the scenes.

Despite the initial spark after being paired together by experts Alessandra Rampolla, Mel Schilling and John Aiken, things almost immediately started going wrong for Ash and Madeleine.

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But why did the couple actually leave MAFS Australia? What really happened?

Why Did Ash And Madeleine Leave MAFS?

It seems like Ash and Madeleine were quietly ushered out of the show due to some reportedly "erratic behaviour" that was happening behind the scenes from Madeleine.

They had only just arrived on the show but after one week together by the first commitment ceremony, Madeleine wrote ‘leave’, yet Ash wrote ‘stay.’ Ash has since claimed this is because fellow couples convinced him he could work through their problems.

When this 'stay'/'leave' scenario happens on the show, the couples are expected to work through their problems by staying another week. Yet for some reason, the day following the Commitment Ceremony, Ash revealed that he had changed his mind and wanted to leave the experiment after all, and for some reason they were both allowed to.

It’s unprecedented for the social experiment to allow the couples to change their minds and leave when they want.

If you recall Season 6 of the show, Jessika Power kept her husband Mick Gould there week after week in order to get to know another groom in the experiment behind his back, and there was nothing he could do about it because she kept writing 'stay.'

So why was Ash allowed to change his mind and leave? The show tried to spin the couple’s exit, by using the show’s narrator to claim they “had a change of heart and they'd come to an amicable decision to leave,” but once again, that didn't seem quite true.

After all, there was absolutely no footage of Madeleine shown from the Commitment Ceremony onwards and that makes us believe she packed up and left despite what Ash had written that night, leaving him no choice but to change his mind the next morning.

Yahoo! Lifestyle revealed there “was a lot more” going on but the producers of MAFS Australia “did not want to dramatise it, and felt it was easier to let them go quickly and quietly,” because of how sensitive the issues at play were.

The publication’s insider claimed, “Madeleine's erratic behaviour had raised quite a few eyebrows during her first week on the show, with no one quite sure if she was acting or it was real. After Ash wrote to stay, she point blank said to producers she refused to carry on with the experiment and was going home.”

“It's not uncommon for participants to threaten to quit like this and no one can be held against their will, with producers then tasked with talking them around to continue with the experiment,” the insider went on.

“Yet with Madeleine, it felt easier to let her go as questions about her state of mind with the pressure of the experiment had already been raised by other cast members and crew.”

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Whilst on the show we saw concerning moments from Madeline like when she broke down into tears seeing cows on their honeymoon and when she claimed she’d been contacted by spirits during a dinner, but according to Ash, that wasn’t even the half of it.

Speaking with Behind The Edit Podcast, Ash revealed the true chaos that went down behind the scenes, “There was a lot of chaos that didn't make it to TV,” he said. “You only got a taste of what went on, it was crazy.”

“You didn't see jumping on tables, screaming at the universe, rolling around on the floor, not participating in any activity that we did. We went on a boat and she hated it, we did clay [pottery] and she hated it, didn't participate, just wild antics.”

Ash also revealed on the podcast that he had not spoken to nor stayed in touch with Madeleine since their filming ended, in fact it was reported to the tabloids that no one had heard from Madeleine since she walked out of the show at all.

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