Fans were left scratching their heads when Jonethen Musulin said he was glad his wife Connie Crayden wrote ‘stay’ this week, despite admitting he was desperate to call it quits.
WATCH: MAFS’ Jonethen talks being bribed by producers
Now, after confirming the Married At First Sight producers coerced him into staying on the show, the FIFO worker claims he was forced to continue filming for nearly a month before being given the go-ahead to exit the experiment.
“It was maybe three or three-and-a-half weeks,” he said when Nova 96.9 radio host Fitzy asked how long he’d been actually writing “leave” at the commitment ceremony. “They only have so much time on the show so they do pressure certain things or ask stuff like ‘why aren’t you guys having sex?’. I kept saying to them, ‘I don’t see anything in this relationship, I wanted to leave’.”
His eye-opening revelation comes days after he told New Idea that he begged producers to let him to home and spend time with his sick father, however they weren’t willing to tear up his contract easily.
“I told producers that I was leaving and that there was nothing they could do about it,” he told New Idea.
“They had already lost so many contestants so that’s when they said to me, ‘What can we do to make you stay?'”
Sadly, Connie was also battling it out with MAFS showrunners, with an insider surprisingly telling New Idea she was pressured into writing “stay” during multiple commitment ceremonies.
“[Two producers] pulled Connie aside for over two hours and they made her rewrite what she had written on her card,” the source dished.
“They stood over her and put pressure on her to write ‘stay’ instead of ‘leave’. Connie came out and she had been crying. It was a very harrowing situation for her and filming was delayed for 2.5 hours that night because of it all.”
Breaking her silence and weighing in on these accusations while chatting to A.B and Ben on Hit105.5’s Coff’s Coast, Connie stated: “At the end of the day, it’s a TV show and there are storylines. Producers like to do whatever they can to execute that storyline.
“No one held a gun to my head and I was the one who put that pen to the paper and wrote ‘stay’. “I take full ownership that I was the one who wrote it.”
So why did she choose to stay another week if Jono had already made it clear he’d checked out of their relationship?
“Everyone has been saying like, ‘WTF, why did she do that? I think if everyone is a little bit patient and just waits until the final vows, the storyline kind of plays out and it’s like, oh, we get it now,” she explained.
In the same breath, Connie also slammed her estranged ex-husband, calling him a try-hard “D-grade celebrity” after he ditched her birthday for a paid club promotion.
“I had my last straw with him this weekend. I can’t play pretend. I can’t live a double life,” the aspiring biologist said through tears on Hobart’s Hit100.9. “It was my birthday this weekend. He was in Melbourne for the whole weekend. He said he would be there for me for my birthday.
“He was with Mikey, Ivan, Steve and Dave… I get it, these guys are celebrities, they’re D grade celebrities,” the fiery bride said, explaining why he missed her birthday celebrations. “They had this very important event to go through and they said after it was done they’d come and meet me for a drink. I thought, awesome, that’d mean the world to me. But after saying they’d come, they didn’t even bother.”
Although the unlucky-in-love MAFS contestant said she saw the other grooms dogging her from a mile away, she didn’t think Jonethen would stoop that low.
“I half expected it, but after everything we’ve been through together, I thought he could… Even David and Steve I was really shocked with as well. I thought they could take an hour after lapping up that D grade life to have a drink with a mate.”
“They were too busy with their meet and greets and thinking they’re really relevant and important.”
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