Married At First Sight’s Dr. Pepper Schwartz chatted with Screen Rant about her time on the series, including the second wedding that’s making MAFS season 17 even more historic. After years of Married At First Sight, Dr. Pepper and her colleagues know how to make a match. Despite criticism from viewers about the show’s capabilities, the credentials behind Dr. Pepper, Pastor Cal Roberson, and Dr. Pia Holec speak for themselves. With abilities in all different fields, the Married At First Sight experts do their best to ensure that their matches are made carefully and tactfully, taking the participant’s pasts, presents, and futures into consideration when pairing them up.
Though matches aren’t always successful on MAFS, a failed relationship can be a lesson learned for both the cast and the experts. Working to right any wrongs they feel they’ve made from season to season, Dr. Pepper and the rest of the MAFS experts spend time analyzing their decisions and doing their best to make better matches moving forward. While the success rate of the series isn’t high, the matches that have lasted through the years are strong relationships, some who even have expanded their families with children after meeting each other on the series.
While Married At First Sight season 17 has been difficult for the cast, the couples left this season have been working hard to make their relationships work. Michael, who the experts matched along with the original couples, was unfortunately left at the altar early in the season in a massive first for the series. Though Michael’s case was unique, the experts felt they could re-match him with another participant. In another first for MAFS, Michael’s second wedding will introduce him to a potential long-term partner in Chloe. Dr. Pepper sat down with Screen Rant before the episode to discuss her time on MAFS and how the experts re-matched Michael.
Screen Rant: Going into Married At First Sight season 17, there have already been some firsts for both you as the experts and us as the viewers. What was different about this cast that pushed the season to be more dramatic?
Dr. Pepper Schwartz: Well, it’s hard to characterize a whole cast – but I think by getting off to an unprecedented start…we’ve never had anything as awful as what happened at the altar [to Michael]. We’ve never had anyone say no at the altar, and I think that put everyone kind of in a tailspin. I think the problems of Orion and Lauren were also somewhat unprecedented, in terms of an early, severe issue that caused them to go into a tailspin. That effects people – whatever happens to somebody also happens to everybody in a way. I think that was unusual and unfortunate, to say the least.
Screen Rant: How do you feel about the criticism the show receives? Some people wonder if it’s scripted, some complain about the success rate of the matches – how do you feel about the way it’s perceived overall?
Dr. Pepper Schwartz: Well – obviously I don’t like criticism [laughs] I don’t love it. I feel it’s unfair. We are 100% not scripted, and all three of us [experts] – I can only speak for myself, but all three of us, we have long careers that far pre-date the show. You know, I don’t need to go back over my whole education and work, but let’s just say that part of who you are in your profession and who my colleagues are in their professions have to do with ethics. You know, you don’t lie, you don’t copy anybody else’s work, you show up and you do what you’ve promised to do. So, I find it kind of offensive, but I understand why people feel that way. So much of reality TV is crafted, is structured, is not what it appears to be. We’re quite unusual, I think, in the case that from the very beginning it was meant to be fair. We’re honest brokers, we’re there to do our best efforts for people who are desperately searching for a committed relationship. We take our skills throughout the two months or so that they’re living together to give them the best shot that they can make it and get what they deeply hope for.
When we put couples together, we’re trying not to do types or who will be dramatic, but rather who won’t be dramatic – who will be the person they promised us they will be. We’re looking for the people who are actually going to do this, far beyond eight weeks. People who understand this is the TV part, but we’re going to give it an effort no matter how we feel and afterwards, when the cameras are gone, the real work begins. We spend enormous time with the scientific tools we have, which admittedly are imperfect. In love and relationships, there are more variables than you want to even think about. I’m just saying, it isn’t scripted and it never has been – we try our best. That being said, marriage is hard, these circumstances are demanding, and I think the fact that we have somewhere between 12 and 14 kids [from MAFS marriages] and at least three couples that I can think of are on their second child, [that’s a success]. This is a hard thing we do, and we do it with people who haven’t been successful in doing it another way. So, I’m proud of the successes we do have. We always try to learn and do better.
Screen Rant: That’s all you can do, sometimes. You mentioned Michael being left at the altar earlier. Obviously, that was huge for MAFS. It was crushing for viewers to watch and I can only imagine how heartbreaking it was for him to experience. When you learned that happened, what were you thinking? Were there any next moves for him?
Dr. Pepper Schwartz: Well, first of all – we weren’t even thinking, we were just feeling. We felt so bad for Michael and went back and thought, what should we have seen? How could we have known this, how did this happen? You think of yourself, first, and then you feel bad for the guy you put in this situation. Michael’s quirky – he’s got his own style, but we all thought he was great. The more we got to know Michael, the more we liked him. He was so thoughtful and considerate and sensitive, he was emotionally intelligent and successful in his career. He was really interested in so many ways, and we just thought he deserved the chance to have somebody be his lifetime partner, and somebody deserved the chance to be his.
We weren’t sure if he was feeling so crushed by the loss that he would even want to consider having another match, but the more we talked about it, the more we felt he just didn’t get a fair deal. He didn’t understand how terrific he was. We kind of thought, is there anything we can do about this? We usually only have one choice for somebody, occasionally we can have somebody where we [have two choices] and we think, we don’t know which of these people would be better, you know? And as we were talking to Michael who was saying, no, I can do this, I still want to get marred – this is still a goal of mine. He convinced us that he was still whole after this. He could’ve just been shattered, but he had a lot of gumption for lack of a better word – and so we thought, well…we had previously sort of struggled between matching him with our runaway bride and Chloe [Brown], and we thought…let’s go back and see.
We had a very interesting thing happen when we talked to Michael. He changed his priorities from when we first interviewed him, and at the top of those priorities after his experience was kindness. When I think of kindness and sensitivity and emotional intelligence, Chloe fits the bill. As we talked about it, we thought maybe this should’ve been our first choice because she’s such an amazingly kind, giving, warm…I could go on and on about Chloe, I’m a big fan. We said if he would have the personal strength to do this, while it’s rare for us to have another choice for somebody, this might be the one. We spent a lot of time going back and forth on the background for both of them, and since his priorities had changed, she shot up in our estimation of their relationship as the right choice. We felt we could do it.
Screen Rant: I was going to ask what Michael and Chloe’s potential strengths would be as a couple, but you kind of answered it there. Is there anything else you would add?
Dr. Pepper Schwartz: The main things I’ve mentioned, but I also think she could appreciate Michael’s quirkiness because of his emotional intelligence. That was the top of the list for her, and [we] felt that he also wanted a woman of strength, and Chloe has a lot in that sweet package, a lot of strength and the social talent to be with a lot of different kinds of people. Her foundation, where she raises money non-profit, and her values aligned [with Michael’s] and they agreed on what was important in life. I think that she had the worldliness to understand that Michael could be all these different things, and that they would be exciting to know. I felt on terms of what he wanted and what she wanted, that they really were very good for one another. An excellent match.
Screen Rant: As a group, as the team of your work together, how does your process change from season to season? As you get to know new people and understand what works and what doesn’t, how does that shift?
Dr. Pepper Schwartz: We do have a post-mortem to look at, you know. What did we miss and why did we miss it? What could we have done differently? Is there anything we’re doing consistently that has proven itself not to work? Or we triumph, what were the things we were doing there? What can we learn from our most successful model? We really try to go over each season’s learning experiences. We also know that people are different in different geographical locations in the countries, it’s why we don’t keep going back to the same places. Midwesterners are different than southerners, for example. People get married younger in the south, they’re kind of “older” than they are in the east because their values are different, the cultures are different. We try to take account, knowing where we are, and how that has shaped these people.
We do a lot of conversation – and you may know, we also employ outside psychological testers, so we consider what they’re saying. My colleagues and I all have different backgrounds and sometimes they see things I wasn’t even looking for and vice versa. We change over time, we learn. It’s just that there’s an infinite amount to learn, so we never learn anything.
It’s not a psychology experiment – we can’t put pressure on one group and no pressure on another. If you were to do it totally scientifically, you’d have to isolate all the variables. What you don’t know is how they’re going to deal with the pressure of living with somebody as their husband or wife, making that commitment without ever living together or having gone on dates, introducing them to families or how their families will react – these are all unknowns. For some people, those factors make it much more difficult for them. We try to pick people for, what I would call coachability. We give them exercises and feedback, we try to help them grow. That’s really high on my list – is somebody really willing to take a look at themselves and hold themselves accountable? I’m always glad when they’re happy to try something else.
