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Kate supports MasterChef lockdowns

Kept apart from family for months in lockdown, newly-annointed MasterChef ambassador Kate Bracks still defends the strategy of producers.

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Right up until the very end MasterChef Australia kept up its practice of contestant lockdowns, requiring all 24 participants to remain at the Masterchef kitchen after shooting the winner announcement on Sunday afternoon.

2011 winner Kate Bracks told TV Tonight producers weren’t taking any risks with potential leaks until the episode aired.

‘We were in lockdown so we ended up hanging out, all 24 of us. We watched a few of the old episodes, I played some ping-pong with my kids, we ate and then we watched the episode as it went to air, so it was lots of fun,” she said.

“It’s all top secret stuff, you know!”

Following the on-air announcement there was a more formal celebration, but Kate didn’t get to bed until around 2:30am before her first media engagement at 5:50am on Monday.

“We booked out a restaurant so we went and had a few drinks there and that was lovely,” she said.

“The was not a whole lot of sleep, but enough to keep me going.

“Everybody’s been lovely. It doesn’t happen to you every day so you’ve got to enjoy it while it lasts.”

On Monday she was shepherded around media engagements including radio, television, print, online media and a flight to Melbourne for The 7PM Project and The Circle.

After a few days of commitments she will finally head back to Orange and her young family who have only had limited access to her for most of the year. She is looking forward to quality time.

“The production made it an essential part of my involvement to have two Skype calls a week, and regular contact about every 2 or 3 weeks. The kids would come down and we’d meet in a park for a couple of hours. It was recognised that the age my children were at they needed some physical contact over that time,” she explained.

The isolation from family proved too much for one contestant, Mat Beyer, who kept a phone to stay in touch. It led to him being booted from the show. But despite wider questions about “lockdowns”, Bracks sees logic in the practice.

“By not having a phone and not having the distraction of your normal life it enables you to focus on your cooking skills. Obviously I had to juggle that with the needs of my children so I am really appreciative of the production ensuring that I had the contact,” she said.

“But I can also see why they limit the contact and the freedom you have because in the long run help you to be able to focus on what you’re doing.”

Looking back on her time in a Reality TV bubble she considers the show as a mix of expectations.

“I liken it to childbirth. You can get your head around it so much and then once you actually do it it’s a bit different,” she laughs.

“I think the hardest part was probably learning to deal with the pressure. Most days when I walked into the kitchen I had this feeling in my stomach that I could vomit. It was just the nerves from the pressure you were under and learning to deal with that. That’s apart from being away from the family, which was definitely the hardest part.”

She considers her teammates a cohesive group, but the elimination of WA mum Rachel was the most difficult loss because she understood the demands of being a mum separated from her brood.

“These are people that you’ve lived with for a couple of months and all of a sudden they’re gone and it feels like it’s with very little warning.”

Family commitments and writing her cookbook will now comprise a big part of her forthcoming year, but she hopes to eventually expand on enterprising ideas.

“For some time I’ve spoken about wanting to open up a B&B one day and I guess the MasterChef process makes that more of a reality, so that’s the plan. Obviously there’s a lot of work that goes into investigating all the work that goes into setting up a B&B. So I’m hoping to get onto that at some point in the near future.”

While some have likened her win to that of favourite mum Julie Goodwin, Brack’s optimism and ability to articulate should see her quickly become an effective ambassador for the MasterChef brand.

“I feel like that chapter’s just closing and another one is opening. But it’s been an incredible ride,” she says.

“I feel incredibly blessed to have had this opportunity.”

19 Responses

  2. oh wow another mum with the required kids for good promo sales of branded MasterChef items – gee that was lucky for the production company and network wasn’t it?

  3. @Goonies, LOL, yeah, looks that way!

    Although the ultimate pay off is good, I couldn’t leave my job and live away from my family and friends for seven months with a bunch of strangers. Just the idea of doing it fills me with horror.

  4. @ Allie, half the stories written about MC are biased as we well know, I still think that until you live like that you probably don’t have the insight into how hard it may or may not be.

    It would absolutely be a long hard graft but the ultimate reward is pretty good.

    Looks like we will agree to disagree as we always do 🙂

  5. @Goonies, I can make a judgment call based on what i have read about the lockdown conditions at the house. I don’t need to have actually been locked in the MC house myself to have formed an opinion about it.

  8. Without the lockdown you would not get the heightened emotions that are on display – this is where ratings comes from.

    Having them lead their day to day life and compete in a cooking show just would not work, there would be so many distractions and besides with 100k on offer a bit of a sacrifice is to be expected.

    @ Allie – until you have actually been in the same situation how can you claim it is cruel and over the top?

  9. Interesting. No problems with the “lockdown” to announce the result. That makes sense. As you don’t want to let any spoilers get out.

    But I’m still not sure about isolating them so much from the real world. I can understand the constrants of the show and their need to focus on “cooking:. Or whatever it was what that they did this year. But maybe they need to change it up a bit and allow for family/friends day.

    Sun did a good interview on twitter, which was very honest and wasn’t so much about selling a brand.

  10. The lockdown at “the house” doesn’t actually concern me too much – I think the contestants know that in advance, so what’s the problem. The producers seem to have been aware of the needs of the children, so that is good. The lockdown in New York I thought I was bizarre and cruel.

  12. If it meant we could stop seeing/hearing them all whine about how much their are missing home and those long shots of them staring at photos on the wall then I say to hell with the lockdown. Get rid of it. Have them in the house Mon-Fri and give them the weekend off.

    Give them more one on one time and less of the social networking time. All the spoilers this year have been absurd and that goes for the judges as well.

  13. Nah, David – the real reason is that they couldn’t find their way out of the house. Channel 10 secretly made it into a maze and filmed it all; brand new reality show out later this year.

    “Ratatouille’s maze”

    Honest. 😉

  14. “While some have likened her win to that of favourite mum Julie Goodwin, Brack’s optimism and ability to articulate should see her quickly become an effective ambassador for the MasterChef brand.”

    I so agree with this! Kate is a poised, natural woman with amazing cooking skills. She will definitely appeal to heaps of people out there, whereas Julie was a sweating, blubbering mess and Adam only appealed to the hipsters.

    Go Kate! Enjoy your win!!

  15. Actually I think Kate is being a touch disingenous. The real reason for the months-long lockdown is of course to reduce the risk of show results being leaked to the general public.

    This whole “so that they can focus on their cooking skills” is nonsense. You can easily do that in your own home! In no way would this be the priority for the show producers.

    1. The real reason is so that they are not “affected” by publicity / family opinions etc and it alters the way they perform on camera. I felt Kate was doing her best ambassador work, so it would be interesting to hear how others felt now the show is over.

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