Your tip
RadarOnlineRadarOnline
BREAKING NEWS
Exclusive

'MasterChef' Is ‘Fake!' Former Contestants Speaks Out About Behind-The-Scenes Trickery

//master chef

Nov. 7 2014, Published 7:08 a.m. ET

Link to FacebookShare to XShare to Email

Add MasterChef to the growing list of reality TV shows that are anything but real. According to past contestants, producers follow a strict recipe in cooking up drama, and only RadarOnline.com has all the details of the behind-the-scenes reality TV fakery!

Season Two contestant Ben Starr recently fired off a bitter blog post about his experience on the show, exposing for the first time what he says really happens on set.

Article continues below advertisement

MasterChef is entertainment,” he wrote. “First and foremost. It is not real. It is not a competition. It is highly engineered fiction … designed to keep you watching from episode to episode. … There is NOTHING real about reality TV.”

Starr says he “witnessed the ugly side of reality TV,” starting with the strict contract he had to sign that gave away all rights to how he would be represented. According to Starr, the exact wording of the contract was as follows:

“The rights granted to Producer also include, but are not limited to, the rights to edit, cut, rearrange, adapt, dub, revise, modify, fictionalize, or otherwise alter the Material, and I waive the exercise of any ‘moral rights.’ I understand that my appearance, depiction, and portrayal in connection with the series may be disparaging, defamatory, embarrassing, or of an otherwise unfavorable nature, may expose me to public ridicule, humiliation, or condemnation, and may portray me in a false light.”

Article continues below advertisement

How do producers do it? “Comments you see a contestant make are often pieced together from sound bytes tangents recorded throughout the entire season,” he claimed in the post. “They’re really good at that. They even did it to me … strung together a sentence from three separate sound bytes scattered from my interviews at various points during filming. I never said what aired on TV. They created it out of thin air.”

What’s more, he alleged, contestants are required to wear the same clothes during every challenge to help streamline the editing process.

“This is so they can cut and paste ANY comment made in an interview and paste it anywhere in the entire season they like, taking it completely out of context and turning it into something else. …” he claimed. "What you see on your screen is NOT how things played out in real life. It is an elaborately constructed fiction.”

MORE ON:
Gordon Ramsay
Article continues below advertisement

And it’s one, he says, that puts contestants at risk. Season 3 runner-up Josh Marks notoriously committed suicide after his run.

“Do I believe MasterChef is specifically to blame for his suicide?” Starr wrote. “Of course not.”

Still, he claimed, “Contestants are subjected to deliberate, intentional stress in order to trigger a high emotional response to situations. They are kept sequestered, locked in a hotel room and can’t leave without an escort, unable to communicate with spouses, children, or parents for weeks at a time. On some seasons, contestants would be awakened in the middle of the night, ordered to pack up their room, and moved to a different room in a different hotel.”

“All this to create frustration, sleep deprivation, and confusion as to where other contestants are being housed,” he said. "On seasons subsequent to mine, contestants were plied with alcohol to loosen their tongues and feel more confident saying things that personal decorum might otherwise prevent them from saying while sober.”

Starr did not respond to RadarOnline.com’s request for comment. And though he was on the show back in 2011, RadarOnline.com has learned that the fakery continues to this day.

Article continues below advertisement

At a filming for the upcoming season in L.A. last month, RadarOnline.com has learned, would-be contestants were provided with seemingly home-made posters and various pieces of flair to jazz up the audition shots.

“Production staff handed out signs that said things like ‘Star Quality,’” an auditioning contestant tells RadarOnline.com. “It was clearly supposed to look like the contestants had brought them, but no one did. It was so fake.”

Do you care if MasterChef is fake? Will you still watch? Let us know in the comments!

Advertisement

DAILY. BREAKING. CELEBRITY NEWS. ALL FREE.

Opt-out of personalized ads

© Copyright 2024 Radar Media Group LLC. RADAR and RADARONLINE are registered trademarks. All rights reserved. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy. People may receive compensation for some links to products and services. Offers may be subject to change without notice.