Olivia on Being the Season’s Villain and Feeling “Blindsided” By Producers of MAFS

3 years ago

Married At First Sight is set to end tonight but Olivia Frazer is just getting started. After being cast as the “villain” of the season, the aspiring teacher has now admitted to feeling “blindsided” by producers when the show went to air.

Her behaviour has caused outrage among viewers, with many creating petitions to stop her from teaching and to also have her charged for circulating an explicit photo of fellow participant Domenica without her co-star’s consent.

And now, in a new interview with Mamamia’s No Filter podcast, the 28-year-old has opened up about her experience on the show, and how the backlash she’s receiving is worse than any other contestant has ever faced.

“I’m at the point now where I’m trying to get up off the floor … I’m at rock bottom, and I’m trying to get up,” she told podcast host Mia Freedman. “And every time someone messages one of my loved ones something awful, I feel like I’m getting kicked back down. I’ve had death threats sent to my personal phone number … and I’ve had many on Facebook. It’s not just the show — if it was just the show, we could all just laugh and say, ‘Yeah that’s not Liv’s character, that’s a different story,’ but it’s the public believing it … it’s just the shock.”

Frazer had once worked as a driving instructor, and so many people had her phone number. The result was extreme trolling.

“Not just kids I used to teach, but parents [messaged me] to call me a pig, a delusional t**t … I think that was the breaking point, when I started getting texts to my phone, because I’d removed myself from online,” she said. “That was really, really breaking point — people that I know, saying I’m disgusting, and they’re mortified they let me teach their kids to drive.”

During the interview, Frazer also spoke for the very first time about the moment that left her broken and convulsed with “awful, guttural sobs”.

She referred back to when the show’s three relationship experts interrogated her over the nude photo scandal. According to Frazer, she and “husband” Jackson Lonie were in a good place in their relationship, but the producers had “manipulated” them by encouraging the experts to say they looked “miserable”.

“I was just shocked and appalled and feeling so, not only threatened, but just like, ‘This is completely out of my control,’” she said.

“[The experts] would sort of stop and listen to their earpieces, and come back with another round. They’d be like, ‘There’s holes in your relationship.’ It got to the point where I could not speak, I was just like, those awful, guttural sobs. And other cast members were sticking up for me, because it was so hard to watch.”

Frazer went on to say that Lonie had asked the experts for advice on what they thought needed to be fixed, but they had responded by “listening to their earpiece, and then come back with some other jab, or [they’d] try some other angle.”

“It was just such a clear manipulation, and it was the first time filming that I could tell they were just saying things so they could edit it later,” she said.

“[MAFS expert] Alessandra [Rampolla] had told me for five minutes straight all the reasons why I don’t have empathy, so I’m like, ‘Sure, OK, I don’t have empathy’ — and they cut it to ‘I don’t have empathy’ and people compare me to Ted Bundy, and I’m a psychopath.”

She also spoke about the nude photo scandal, which has gone down as one of the most talked-about controversies in the history of MAFS. Frazer explained how she came across the photo, saying her girlfriends had “just googled her”.

“They sent me this information while I was drinking off-camera with a couple of other cast members, and the conversation that was had was, ‘I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to have that platform,’ meaning OnlyFans … because we’re meant to have a massive social media sweep [prior to the show],” she said. “The whole storyline looks like I’m out for revenge and a malicious person, and I’m not. I had the dumb luck of being the cast member who was sent the information. Everybody who was in the room has stuck up for me and said it wasn’t shared maliciously.

“I was just really naive … I didn’t think it was a big deal because it was so publicly accessible. I didn’t think it was a big secret; I didn’t think I was outing anybody.”

She then admitted to feeling “blindsided” by the way the incident was portrayed on screen.

“I mentioned [the nude image] to my producer who didn’t think it was a big deal either, and didn’t think I thought it was a big deal … and I was just really blindsided by production because they were putting words in my mouth and saying I did it out of revenge,” she said. “That ‘revenge’ word is such a massive trigger … like, they’ve got my face on the ad with the big red ‘revenge’ title above it … That’s a really serious accusation, and that’s not what happened.”

But while she had a lot of qualms, Frazer went on to take accountability for her “controversial” comments.

“I think I was very naive in that I sort of thought, ‘I won’t get myself into any trouble, I’ll be a good girl’. And I usually am — I’m usually the teacher’s pet,” she told the podcast. “There are some quite controversial things I have said and I have to take accountability for that. I have a very sharp tongue and no filter, and that’s definitely gotten me into trouble in a couple of instances here.”

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