Married At First Sight bride Alissa Fay has finally broken her silence after viewers watched her clash with rival bride Bec Zacharia.
Speaking to Daily Mail, Alissa, 33, admitted that reliving the drama playing out on screens has been confronting.
Alissa said it was especially shocking to learn that Bec had allegedly been trying to dig up gossip about her behind the scenes.
During Tuesday’s episode, Alissa’s friend revealed that Bec had been ‘running around town’ attempting to uncover dirt about the bride while the experiment was still filming.
Looking back now, Alissa admits she was blindsided by the allegations at the time.
‘I was like, really? Why is this happening?’ she recalled.
‘Allegedly there were things going around about how I was still in love with my ex and other rumours being spread.’
‘It’s crazy when I think about it. There were things being said and I wasn’t really aware of the context behind it all at that time.’
The bride said much of the speculation stemmed from private group chats between friends outside the experiment – which only added to the confusion.
‘There was just a lot of noise,’ she explained.
‘When your friends are on a TV show, people talk. Everyone has group chats and people are trying to support their friends.’
‘But I know there were not nice things said that you can’t really take back unfortunately.’
Despite the tension, Alissa insists she and husband David handled the situation with maturity – and the drama ultimately brought them closer together.
‘David and I really showed up together as a unit,’ she said.
‘We never yelled, we never screamed. We approached things in a mature way.’
‘He just said, “Hey Bec, what’s the goal here?” and we tried to have an adult conversation about it.’
According to Alissa, the ongoing rumours and outside noise could have easily derailed their relationship.
‘I feel like it definitely helped us grow stronger,’ she said.
‘But it is hard to build a relationship when there’s so much noise going on around you.’
‘You’ve just got to remember to have each other’s back and show up for each other.’
While viewers mainly see the couples interacting during dinner parties, Alissa revealed she also leaned heavily on fellow brides Rachel Gilmore and Stella Mickunaite during the ordeal.
‘There’s a lot of missing elements that aren’t shown on screen,’ she said.
‘Rachel and I were practically best friends at that point, and Stella was always there supporting me.’
‘They were holding my hand through a lot of it and I’m forever grateful for their friendships during that time.’
Monday night’s dinner party also delivered one of the most chaotic group confrontations of the season – with tensions erupting between several couples.
Alissa described the atmosphere as ‘a very noisy table’.
‘There was a lot of s**t being thrown around,’ she said.
‘We definitely saw a side of Juliette that had never been seen before. She was very angry and quite vicious towards Joel.’
She also took aim at the way groom Teddy was mocked by other cast members during the night.
‘Teddy gets a lot of love but honestly just let the guy have his teddy,’ she said.
‘If he wants to cuddle a teddy at night or have his mum scratch his back, who cares? It was really mean the way people were coming for him.’
Alissa also suggested fellow bride Gia was quick to involve herself in the drama.