If you’ve been watching The Block this season, you’ll know Tayla has become one of the show’s biggest talking points.
The 32-year-old has already faced backlash over her big personality, but lately, viewers have found something new to focus on.
As the weeks have gone on, fans have questioned whether Tayla is pulling her weight alongside her dad, Rick, with some accusing her of leaving him to do all the heavy lifting.
“I feel so sorry for Rick, but he needed to be tougher on her,” one viewer wrote, while another harshly called her a “spoilt brat”.
There has been an onslaught of criticism towards Tayla, however, one fan pointed out that it was easy for producers to paint each contestant as a “character”, and that Tayla has clearly been pinned as the “lazy” and “self-indulgent” one.
“Her character was shown as an ‘all over the place, lazy, wasting time, playing in a literal pot’ type character… It’s all so extremely convenient” the fan said.
It’s this exact sentiment that dad Rick spoke to WHO about, claiming a lot of what Tayla does isn’t being shown on the show.
Rick says viewers aren’t seeing everything Tayla does
Rick admitted that Tayla’s contribution might not always look particularly obvious when the episode rolls around.
“Tayla really, you know, we worked pretty hard. It probably doesn’t show Tayla doing much at all, but yeah, she put in some hard yards there,” he told WHO.
And while Rick didn’t exactly launch into a full-blown attack on the edit, that one little admission certainly makes you wonder what we’re seeing and not seeing behind the scenes.
Rick and Tayla give an example of when Tayla’s contribution wasn’t shown
There is at least one good example of Tayla taking the lead during a challenge that wasn’t shown fully in an episode.
Remember the dog kennel challenge?
The teams were asked to custom-build kennels, with Rick and Tayla taking home the $10,000 cash prize and a coveted gnome point after winning. That extra point then helped them clinch the main ensuite challenge by just 0.5 points against Chantel and Wyatt on Sunday.
Well, Tayla says the winning design was hers, and Rick backed her up.
“We won the dog kennel challenge which was my idea,” she told WHO.
Far from leaving Rick to do everything, Tayla claims she was actually the one calling the shots during the build.
“I was instructing dad at this point of what to do, where this needed to go, where that needed to go,” Tayla admitted. “Obviously, in the end, he had to put his touches on the slat on the roof and stuff for waterproofing and whatever, but this was my design.”
But Tayla wasn’t exactly doubting herself.
“My plan worked, my design worked, my dad, god bless his soul, he listened to me.”
So, while viewers might not always see Tayla with a tool belt in hand, there’s at least one pretty significant piece of evidence that she isn’t just standing around while her dad does all the work.
And perhaps that’s exactly what Rick meant when he said Tayla’s “hard yards” don’t always make it to screen.
A little reality TV plotting and editing to make someone look a certain way? Hmm. We’ve definitely seen this film before.
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