One might think that MasterChef has become harder over the last 16 seasons, but one former contestant disagrees.
Chris Badenoch, who competed on the very first season of the show and then returned in 2020, has lifted the lid on his experiences.
He said the show was now “set up” so contestants could succeed, and did not think that was the case in 2009.
“In season one, it felt like we were set up to fail, and only a few would fight their way through it,” he told Yahoo! Lifestyle.
The former contestant added that the judges were harsher in the earlier seasons, unlike today.
“I remember when Gary would call a dish ‘crap’. Now, the judges seem complimentary toward everyone. Bring back the carnage!” he said.
“No fridge”
His wife, Julia Jenkins, whom he met during the first season, explained that the kitchen was also under-resourced.
“We had no equipment – there was no fridge until the last couple of weeks of the show – and no time. It literally was, ‘This is the challenge, go grab your ingredients, now cook,’ all in the space of a few minutes,” she explained to Yahoo! Lifestyle.
“Now, the contestants are given so much scope to create beautiful-looking food.
“They’ve got time to concept and plan, time to grab ingredients, time to cook, so much equipment, gorgeous plates – our choices for plates were white round or white square if you were trying to be fancy.”
As contestants on the original season, Chris said they went in blindly, but recent MasterChef stars had more advantages seeing how the show worked.
“In season one, we had no idea what we faced minute to minute. The constraints of a challenge could change in the middle of a challenge, and the producers were literally making it up as they went along back then,” he explained.
“The cast now have over 15 years of reference material to draw from, so they know what works on the show.”
Strict rules
MasterChef Australia‘s executive producer, Margaret Bashfield, also told our sister publication TV Week that some rules were also relaxed over the years.
One was that contestants could have more contact with their loved ones.
“The worst case scenario is two 10-minute phone calls home a week, but there are exceptions,” she said.
“There’s also outings and contenders were allowed to leave the house more this year to go down the street because we’d finished filming before the show went to air,” Margaret explained.
Season one winner Julie Goodwin confirmed this after she returned to the kitchen to compete on the Fans v Favourites series.
“This experience of MasterChef has been very different to my first one: this time we’ve had access to our phones and to our families,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald. “But I know what it’s like to be cut off from the people you love and thrust into a competitive environment.”
