Every MAFS expert who quit the show, plus their detailed reasons why

MAFS just wouldn’t be MAFS without the experts. But plenty of icons didn’t stick around. Following the news that Mel Schilling is leaving after 12 years, here’s a rundown of every MAFS UK and Australia expert who quit, and their reasons why.

Mel Schilling

Our beloved Mel wasn’t actually on MAFS Australia from the start. She replaced the expert Sabina Read after season one. Mel detailed her reasons for leaving MAFS. She shared on Instagram: “In recent years, my health challenges and living in the UK spending up to three months a year away from my family is no longer sustainable. It has become clear that I must make a change that puts my family, health and time at the very centre of my life.”

Mel added that she was “leaving not with sadness, but with a deep sense of gratitude”.

In 2023, Mel was diagnosed with colon cancer. She filmed MAFS UK 2024 while going through chemotherapy. Mel shared last year that she was in remission.

It seems as if Mel will continue to be an expert on MAFS UK, just not the Australian version of the show.

Dr Trisha Stratford

Trisha in season six
(Image via Channel 4)

She was an expert on MAFS Australia from the beginning until 2020. Alessandra replaced her in season eight. When Trisha announced her exit, she explained: “I have decided to step back from the television series to focus on my writing, research and neuropsychotherapy.”

Over the next few years, Trisha dropped more clues as to why she really quit the show. She told Woman’s Day in 2021 that she signed up for MAFS when it was an “observational documentary”, but she felt the vibe changed over the years.

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Trisha said: “It got supersized, a bit like MasterChef, into what we know as MAFS now. The participants we got in season six and seven were so outrageous and outside the norm that it wasn’t what I signed up for… Did people watch the last two seasons to learn about relationships or to see people being outrageous? We all like to see people making fools of themselves because we sit there going, ‘Well, I’m better than that!’”

She continued: “At a couple of dinner parties, I felt sick. I felt in my guts that this wasn’t what I’d want to be watching at home on TV.”

Trisha also felt that some people signed up to MAFS who were more interested in fame than in love. “We had genuine people and we really were testing all those psychological and scientific theories of attraction. Big egos became the norm. We got participants who came on the show to boost their Instagram numbers.”

Trisha sadly died in 2023, at age 72.

Genevieve Gresset and Dr Angela Smith

The team from MAFS UK season five
(Image via Channel 4)

Mel Schilling and Charlene Douglas weren’t always the ones to pair up the UK couples alongside Paul C. Brunson. The matchmaker Genevieve Gresset and the psychologist Dr Angela Smith were on the show until 2020.

MAFS Australia became massively popular in the UK during lockdown. Channel 4 decided to make MAFS UK more like the Australian show. This process involved adding dinner parties and changing the channel to E4. The vibe changed from being more like a documentary, to being more like a classic reality TV dating show. Mel and Charlene replaced Genevieve and Angela as experts.

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