For many fans, Scott McCristal‘s tearful reaction to the iPad task on Tuesday’s episode of Married At First Sight (MAFS) was hard to watch.
The iPad revealed footage of his MAFS wife, Gia Fleur getting flirted with pretty brazenly by her back-up match, James, and flirting pretty aggressively back — even to the point where she said she’d be done with Scott in a week.
“She’s a complete manipulator, hypocrite, everything, like she just f**ked me over,” Scott said after watching the video. “I paid for everything in this experiment. I would tell her every day how beautiful she is,” he added. “I’m f**king torn apart. I just got f**ked. I just got f**ked for three months.”
But Combined Communication Specialist and Body Language Expert Scott Taylor studied Scott’s nonverbal behaviour, and thinks that Scott hammed up his reaction for the cameras.
“There was some genuine elements to Scott’s sadness,” the pro said on Instagram. “He got some activation of some of the emotionally-driven muscles, but it was exaggerated for the camera. It wasn’t to the extent you saw.”
The expert added that as Scott was watching the video, his nonverbal behaviour didn’t indicate surprise, as that usually involves “micro expressions” like the eyes and mouth opening up. “There was no element of the surprise part,” he revealed.
“So that means he’d either watched it prior to that, or he’d been told about some of the things [that were in the video], from a behaviour point of view.”
Expert reveals when “true sadness” starts to leak out
However, the expert says that as Scott started describing what he saw in the video to producers, some genuine sadness was present. “He started with anger, which is, we got the glabella muscle activate there, and some chin jut.”
“But then you saw true sadness leak out… when he was speaking about prior relationships,” he explained. “There wasn’t true sadness before that.”
The moment he’s referring to happens towards the end of the episode, where Scott does genuinely look like he’s breaking down. “This happens with everyone. They just use me,” an emotional Scott says.
“They use me… and the more money I make the more used I get because I give so much to them… I just give people so much,” the MAFS groom said, before adding, “I’m never going to let this happen again.”
Married At First Sight (MAFS) 2026 airs Sunday – Tuesday on Channel 9 and 9Now.
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