Clint Rice was an intruder on this year’s season of Married at First Sight (MAFS) but it wasn’t his short-lived marriage to Lauren Hall that generated the most headlines: it was the early leak of his new relationship with Jacqui Burfoot that took centre stage.
While MAFS fans won’t see the blossoming romance until Sunday’s reunion episode, it’s not a secret now that the two shacked up not long after Jacqui’s Final Vows where she and Ryan Donnelly walked away from their relationship.
Clint spoke to Chattr about the upcoming MAFS Reunion, saying it was an “interesting Dinner Party” as he and Jacqui announced their new relationship to the group, adding that the group’s reception was “pretty mixed”.
“There were a few of them happy for us. A lot of the group were, I guess, they wanted to go down the path of trying to accuse us of moving too fast, which is just crazy. It’s our relationship. It’s our rules,” Clint continued.
“And the crazy bit is when the cast starts saying, ‘Oh, how could you guys be living together after two weeks?’ It’s like, guys, don’t forget, you entered this experiment. You started living with a stranger on the very first night you met!”
MAFS’ Clint spills on the upcoming MAFS reunion
Clint hinted that he and Ryan will have a “heated exchange” over his relationship with Jacqui at the Reunion Dinner Party. “I’ll say Ryan’s a good actor,” Clint revealed. “He has all these reactions that are so dramatic. I had calls from him after I left the show trying to get information out of me about Jacqui, and trying to become my mate.
“When I went in there, I was like, ‘I’m not your mate, so stop trying to befriend me’. I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to bring me in as a mate, and then go, ‘oh, mates, don’t do this to each other’. The first thing he said to me when I walked into the cocktail party at reunion was, ‘how’s Jacqui?’ So he had a heads up. I said, ‘Well, yeah, let’s go talk about it. Let’s go get a drink and sit down and talk about it.'”
Clint said the nature of the show means that things often just need to play out on-screen.
“The thing is, like, this is the reality of the show. We’re not allowed to talk about those types of things off camera, because production can’t tell their story. So if I had called Ryan the week before and said, ‘Hey, Ryan, I’m with Jacqui. We’re coming to reunion’, how does the production tell that story?
“So out of respect to the show, I had to wait until we’re on camera to share that with him. It might be hard for him to understand and he might be blindsided, but that’s kind of how it had to play out.”
Will Lauren Hall show up to the 2025 MAFS Reunion?
Clint and Lauren left the experiment as friends after a tense Retreat Week with the rest of the group feeling as though Lauren had been leading Clint on.
When asked if Lauren showed to the Reunion and where the two stand now, Clint said they had some contact as their wedding aired, but that’s about it.
“Yeah, she [Lauren] said she wasn’t going [to the reunion], and then we did speak a bit when the wedding went air,” Clint said.
“I called Lauren the night after the Dinner Party reunion and told her that Jacqui and I were together and she was very supportive. But yeah, I’ve not much more to say about that. I think she’s fine. We got along fine during the experiment.”
The MAFS Reunion dinner party will air on Channel Nine and 9now this Sunday, at 7pm.
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