It’s the fiery showdown that has Australia talking – Roula and Rachael’s brutal MKR war with Sydney sisters Jess and Emma.
The pair traded verbal blows in the fiercest on-screen war we’ve ever seen on the hit reality show, with Roula calling the blonde siblings ‘fake’ and ‘fat’, and Jess threatening to ‘chuck [Roula] out of her chair’.
But what happened when the cameras stopped rolling and in the aftermath of the epic on-screen clash? Melbourne model and personal trainer Roula says the multiple nights of conflict resulted in her having an ’emotional breakdown’ on the night of Kim and Suong’s Instant Restaurant – revealing that she regrets some of the cruel jibes she made.
‘When I said ‘They’re fat and they’re fake,’ I thought ‘Oh my mum’s going to kill me,’ because she said don’t mention people’s weight, don’t mention people’s religion – and I thought ‘well, there goes the weight one out the window!” Roula tells New Idea. ‘In the heat of the moment, you say things that you don’t mean.
‘We were getting told Rachael’s voice was annoying, she’s a cow, our hair was disgusting, so naturally we’re going to retaliate to that. Now that I look back at it, I think what a silly thing to say.’
Jess, however, suspects that Roula antagonised her and sister Emma to get more attention and airtime on the show.
‘She kept going because she knew she was going to get something out of me,’ she tells New Idea. ‘I don’t know if she thought she was going to get airtime out of it or whether that was just her personality. She would say stupid s*** that would p*** me off and I would go back at her. I wasn’t going to be a victim!
‘She was just being really rude. Like when I told her I was going to chuck her out of the chair, she was being disrespectful – and that’s why I said it to her. There was no way I’d tolerate you talking about me and my food that way, saying you can’t stomach it. It’s absolutely ridiculous. It was not inedible – she was being dramatic and over the top.’
But while Roula said on air that she didn’t eat fried food because she wanted to stay in shape, she now claims that there was a medical reason behind her fear of fried food.
‘I will regurgitate anything fried because of my hiatal hernia,’ she explains. ‘I didn’t tell them that on the show, but when they asked why I didn’t eat it, I just said I couldn’t stomach it.
‘Then Jess jumped down my throat and said that she would pick me up and throw me out of my chair. I was like ‘Ohhhhh, you don’t even know me and you’re coming across at me like that? It was really full on.
‘So I let it go the first time, but the next time she said something, I said: ‘Excuse me sister – if I don’t like something I will return it.’ I think the tension built from there.’
For the full story, and more insider exclusives from My Kitchen Rules, see this weeks issue of New Idea – out now!
