EXCLUSIVE: Rachel and Steven were offended by MAFS co-star Bec’s lewd comment about their relationship at the Retreat but understood it wasn’t said with malice.
That is until they watched back Bec’s conversation with production in Monday night’s episode which, to them, was previously unheard and unseen.
“Knowing that the joke hurt me, watching her in a voxy [interview] laughing about it and saying, ‘Oh I shouldn’t laugh’, I was like, ‘oh that’s not very kind’, so that really hurt,” Rachel told nine.com.au, dubbing this her “worst week ever”.
Steven agreed, especially as he could “relate” to Bec in the moment.
“I say dumb crap all the time, I always stick my foot in it. But when you watch it back, it just shows there’s no remorse,” he said. “Now you’re sort of taking the piss a little bit and you’ve upset someone who’s actually your friend as well.
“All the respect that Bec’s got for Rachel at that period of time is just simply not there. And you sort of go, ‘Well, that’s not really a friend, is it?’”
More than the joke itself, she was hurt by the lack of respect for her feelings.
“You know that your first joke hurt me, so why are you continuing to make jokes about merch? That was really hard to be in a fight with a friend, and regardless, I never spoke about Bec the way that she spoke about me behind her back, which again is hurtful.”
For the experiment’s “slow burn” couple, being caught up in drama about their intimacy had a major impact.
“I don’t like putting my sex life in the spotlight at the best of times,” Steven said.
“We went into it as a big celebration, and now from that comment it’s become a thing of, ‘Where are you guys at now? Are you guys still intimate with each other? Especially after that comment, where are you at?’ You feel pressured now.”
Bec’s toast has become to focus on the retreat – much to Rachel and Steven’s horror. (Nine)
Rachel also responded to both Bec and Danny’s claims she was overreacting.
“Watching Bec describe how I was behaving, I thought, you are really amping this up and making it out that I’m doing all these things and behaving this way – ‘Oh, this is the most humiliating time of my life’ – I never said that. So it was very unfair,” she said.
“Everyone is going to have a different reaction and different things that are going to upset them, but at no point did I yell. At no point did I become aggressive. I just spoke.”
“It just put us on ice because it felt like we were under a microscope, there was this spotlight on us and our intimacy at that point,” Rachel agreed.