Of course the dinner party heavily focused on the feud between season six brides Cyrell Paule and Jessika Power that culminated in Cyrell throwing a glass of white wine into Jessika’s face but according to Sarah Roza, there were between four and five other explosive confrontations going on around the dinner table.
“There were definitely a lot of problems behind the scenes as well – there was a fight that broke out between Ines [Basic] and Mike [Gunner], Troy [Delmege] got involved and poor Troy copped it. It was just very vulgar, the language and threats that were coming during that fight, and it was shocking.”
Sarah also weighed in on the Jess and Cyrell showdown and describes the ordeal as “very intense.”
“When the wine throwing incident happened, it was kind of scary,” she says.
“We could almost see it coming – it was like it was in slow motion and we could see it all happening. I remember I was grabbing glasses away from Cyrell. It was unprovoked – I’m not going to say Jess wasn’t saying things to her as well but she did try her best to go away from the situation whereas unfortunately it wasn’t what Cyrell wanted to see or hear from Jess. I was saying to Cyrell ‘I can see you’re passionate, of course you love your family but you need to reel it back in a bit because it’s not helping your cause.’”
She adds: “I was sitting next to Cyrell and I was trying to speak with her - I was trying to calm her and make her see reason and she actually thanked me at one point and said ‘I know you’re trying to help me.’ But she was very angry at Nasser [Sultan] and Jess.”
“I’m not used to seeing violence like that and I was terrified at that part because I didn’t know what was going to happen next. It was a very traumatic experience to go through and that’s probably something that the viewers weren’t really aware of.”
Despite the clashes, Sarah reveals that not every conversation at the dinner party was confrontational. In fact, there were some lively debates going on as well that she reckons were “missed opportunities.”
“I get it’s all about the drama but there were very important conversations about sexism, feminism, female empowerment and that was just railroaded by the drink throwing scene,” she says.
“I think there was a lot of healthy, robust debate going on between myself and some of the other women and men at the table. I think men and women of Australia would’ve been cheering and saying ‘Here’s some healthy debate for once that’s not catty or b****y, it’s actually quite fruitful where both parties are willing to learn from each other.’”
Other than Wine Gate 2021, the other main scandal of the night came in the form of season five contestant Nasser Sultan whose online trolling had rubbed many of his fellow MAFS alumni the wrong way.
“Where do we even begin with Nasser? He got absolutely pummelled – everybody gave it to him!” Sarah laughs.
“Pretty much everybody chimed in with their own story about what he’d said and how he’d hurt them. He never apologised, he refused to apologise so I suppose that’s the one irony of the whole show – the one time we were unified was against Nasser!”
“I think he’d be a therapist’s dream to be honest. And I don’t think he wants to change, I think he feeds off the notoriety of it too much,” she adds before admitting she fears for her controversial co-star.
“I honestly hope he has some revelation and some moment. I don’t know when it’s going to happen - I hoped it would’ve happened at the dinner party. Watching back I could see the panic in his eyes as we were all saying things to him.”
Sarah, who is currently still single, watched the reunion back to see how everything would come out, but don’t expect her to watch any re-runs.
“I actually watched it alone because I like to listen to exactly what’s being said so I don’t miss anything. But I’ve only watched it once, I haven’t watched it twice!”