After dominating the Married At First Sight experiment, competing on The Challenge Australia and travelling across the globe on The Amazing Race, Cyrell Paule took on her greatest reality TV challenge yet: I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!.
The popular reality show has long been described as family-friendly viewing — with Robert Irwin and Julia Morris sharing hosting duties and the famous contestants becoming besties as they experience a once-in-a-lifetime adventure in South Africa — but Cyrell’s experience was anything but.
Instead of singing “Kumbaya” around the campfire and forming lifelong bonds with her co-stars, the reality TV powerhouse has claimed she was singled out during filming, excluded from the cast group chat and even blocked on Instagram by one of her campmates.
For the first time since leaving the jungle, Cyrell has opened up on PEDESTRIAN.TV’s podcast Villain Edit about what viewers didn’t see on TV and how things have unfolded post-show.
“I didn’t only just have the snakes, I had some snaky people in there, if you get my drift,” she said.
The jungle cliques
Cyrell admitted that she wasn’t surprised to be left out of the group chat after filming wrapped because the “cliques” in the jungle were very obvious.
“Being in there, you could see who was closer and who liked who, but when they aired it, obviously, they were just going to show the more peaceful parts,” she revealed.
“The producers themselves said, ‘Hey Cyrell, this isn’t like the other shows you’ve done, this isn’t like Married At First Sight, this is a family show’ — and as soon as I heard that, I knew that was going to limit my vocabulary altogether,” she joked. “But I knew they weren’t going to show all the drama.”
The mother-of-one said she “definitely didn’t feel liked” by her co-stars, and there was one incident where she actually walked past people “b*tching” about her.
“They were literally like, ‘It’s because she makes great TV, that’s what they always pick her for all the trials and stuff’,” she detailed. “But I’m like, do I look like I want to do these trials, you know? Like, come on, dude, who wants to be with the snakes and stuff? It kind of started from there.”
The co-star who blocked her
Although she’s remained close with Rebekah Elmaloglou, Rachel Hunter and Matt Zukowski post-show, Cyrell said she was surprised to discover that one co-star had blocked her on Instagram: former MasterChef judge George Calombaris.
She explained that she had been keeping a close eye on which co-stars were following each other as the show was airing, and one day she wasn’t able to see George’s account. Cyrell claimed that she was blocked for “a week and a half” before George eventually unblocked her, sent her a follow request and invited her to the season finale party at his venue — but he unfollowed her again soon after.
“The girl’s got the receipts, proof, screenshots, timelines — I’ve got everything,” she said. “He was like ‘I don’t even know how Instagram works’, but then after he followed me, he unfollowed me again. So you clearly know how it works if you know how to block, follow, unfollow and send a DM!”
Unlike some of her infamous feuds in the public eye, Cyrell said she’s happy to move on from the drama because he never said anything nasty about her and she is friendly with his wife Natalie.
“Maybe it was just a petty little thing, maybe it was with the group chat, who knows,” she said. “Maybe in the group chat, he felt like he couldn’t be friends with me? I don’t know.”
The ‘secret’ friendship
Cyrell went on to claim that George wasn’t the only contestant who seemingly tried to distance themselves from her post-show, with The Brady Bunch star Barry Williams requesting her email address rather than following her on Instagram.
“He sent me a request from our managers that said, ‘Would they like to exchange emails?’ and I was like, ‘Why? So we can have a secret friendship?’,” she recalled.
“It’s funny because he accepted everyone else [on Instagram] and I actually sent him a follow request,” she continued. “Maybe it’s just one of those high school things like, ‘Oh, the other guys don’t like you’, but he wanted what I felt was like a secret friendship, because he wanted it via email.”
The unseen fight with Deni Hines
While her conflict with George and Barry happened off-camera, Cyrell’s beef with Deni Hines was on full display. The pair continuously butted heads in camp, with Deni at one point telling Cyrell to “Google her” when she got home from the jungle, but it turns out they had even more arguments that were edited out of the show.
“There was one incident where we got an oxtail for dinner,” she detailed. “I had already separated her vegetarian stuff and our meat stuff, and she just kept trying to grab our food, so I was like, ‘Yours is over there!’. It was a funny fight over food, but then she started crying.”
Cyrell also made it clear that she and Deni haven’t continued any sort of relationship post-show — and no, she never ended up Googling her.
“I would have, but I totally was worried about my phone getting a virus,” she joked. “I was just like, ‘Oh god no! I need my phone!’ So I decided to continue living my life.”
Check out Cyrell’s full interview on PEDESTRIAN.TV‘s new podcast Villain Edit, where we unpack all the wild, chaotic and messy moments from your favourite shows. Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
