'Yes, reality TV producers prefer everyone to be a little drunk.'

Dresses, dresses, dresses. Lots of champagne. Helicopter dates. Bitching. And, of course, True Love.

Yas, yas, that’s what you THINK goes on on The Bachelor, but actually, there’s a whole lot more to it.

And Rosie Waterland (who else?) got a former contestant to tell us everything that really happens when the cameras aren’t rolling.

Penny Palman appeared in the first ever season of The Bachelor Australia. The one that gave us Tim and Anna, AKA the perfect formation of a couple. She also gave Rosie some rolled-gold gossip on the new sneak-peek of The Binge, Mamamia’s new TV podcast.

Like:

Do the producers really try to get you a little bit drunk? Yes.

“You’re all together getting ready – getting your hair and makeup done and what not…and you are already getting offered drinks to take the edge off.

“I knew what they were doing from the start….so I was saying I want sparkling mineral water in my glass so it looked like champagne…. But a lot of the girls needed it too. Because there is literally hundreds of people looking at you behind the scenes. So you are going to take a drink for dutch courage. But after that, it goes beyond, and things get you a little loose.”

A photo posted by Penny Maree (@penny_maree) on Nov 21, 2013 at 11:36am PST

 

 

That is not all that Penny told us. Not by a very long way. You need to listen to The Binge, with Rosie Waterland, to hear Rosie’s take on the US Bachelor, and on just how ‘real’ reality love can get.

Listen to the full episode of The Binge here:

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Do they really frame people as the villains? Yes…

“I picked it from the start who they were framing as the villains…and I actually pulled one of them aside and said ‘listen, you need to watch the way you’re speaking.’ And they do things like – they’d ask you a question and if you answered it one way they would say – oh could you just say that one more time? And because you were pissed off about it – then you would say ‘oh it was really good’ and they would use that one.”

A photo posted by TheBachelorAU (@thebachelorau) on Jul 30, 2015 at 3:28am PDT

Are there hidden cameras? Not so much…

“There were no hidden cameras in the bedroom. So when you didn’t have a microphone on you – you weren’t being filmed.”

“But every time you had interactions with him (Tim, The Bachelor), you were on camera. I tried to get away at one point – and everyone was freaking out that I had stepped over the line.”

“Everyone was convinced that (Tim) had an inner ear monitor in, because he was so nervous…we thought he was being fed lines. So I went up to him and said, ‘hey do you have an inner ear thing in your ear? We just want to know.'”

And our last question – did Tim like Anna from the start?

A photo posted by ❤️ANNA HEINRICH❤️ (@annaheinrich1) on Jan 13, 2016 at 2:10am PST

“Funnily enough, we had no idea about Anna. She kind of came out of nowhere. We had no idea that they were pashing on dates. She kept her cards really close, and that was a big shock until the end.”

Subscribe to The Binge on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcast, now. 

Listen to the full episode of The Binge on iTunes here.