Married At First Sight groom Danny Hewitt has claimed he was the worst affected by his TV wife Bec Zacharia’s infamous crude ‘finger bang’ comments this week that caused carnage during the couples’ retreat.
Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail, Danny, 34, admitted watching the drama unfold on screen again was anything but easy.
‘It was stressful to be fair… stressful, a bit triggering,’ he said.
‘Bit of PTSD, you know what I mean? I probably should’ve just not watched it and gone to the pub instead.’
Danny found himself at the centre of the retreat chaos after wife Bec Zacharia’s infamous ‘finger bang’ comment detonated one of the most uncomfortable moments of the season.
While the remark sparked outrage from Rachel Gilmore and divided the group, Danny insisted there was no malicious intent behind the joke.
‘You’ve got to be able to read a room,’ he admitted.
‘We know Rachel’s sensitive. If you cracked that joke about me, I couldn’t care less. But Rachel is sensitive, so Bec probably should have read the room a little bit better.’
‘With that being said, it was a joke. There was no malice meant in the joke.’
According to Danny, the comment came during what had been the most positive night of the entire experiment.
‘That night had been the best night in our season’s history,’ he said.
‘There had been no arguing, everyone had got along, we’d had pizza, we were at the retreat. It was unbelievable.’
‘Production asked Bec to finish the night with a speech. She cracked a few jokes in there about a few people and they all landed.’
‘And then the last joke at the end… boom. It was a nuclear bomb.’
Why Danny and Bec fled the retreat
As tensions escalated following the fallout, Danny made the call to remove himself and Bec from the retreat entirely.
‘That was my idea,’ he revealed.
‘I’d had enough of all the bulls**t, so I was just like, ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘So we just pulled a bear move and we bounced.’
The pair temporarily left the experiment and were later checked into a hotel away from the rest of the cast.
‘Just get away for a few days, recharge the batteries,’ he said. ‘It was good to do it.’
Despite the dramatic exit, Danny insisted he had no elaborate strategy when returning for the next dinner party.
‘With MAFS you can’t have a game plan,’ he said.
‘You’ve just got to see how things play out and adjust on the fly.’
READ MORE: Two brides exit Married At First Sight retreat following heated dispute over ‘finger’ comments
‘I was in a lose-lose situation’
Danny admitted the retreat placed him in what he described as the worst position of anyone in the experiment.
‘I’m damned if I do, I’m damned if I don’t,’ he said.
‘If I don’t stick up for Bec I’d be called a s*** husband. But when I do stick up for her, she’s not always in the right. I just had to pick which loss I wanted to take.’
He revealed tensions had already been brewing behind the scenes before the retreat incident.
‘There had been so much stuff behind the scenes. I told Bec I wanted her to be ride or die for me,’ he said.
‘So when this all went down, I said, “I guess this is my time to prove that.”‘
Danny also admitted that watching the episode back left him questioning some of the decisions he made in the moment.
‘When you watch it back you think, “Why didn’t I say this? Why didn’t I do that?”‘ he said.
‘But when you’re living it in the moment, you make mistakes. We’re only human.’
What really happened with Scott
The retreat drama also triggered the collapse of Danny’s friendship with fellow groom Scott McCristal.
But Danny insisted the two men handled the situation calmly compared to the chaos unfolding between the brides.
‘My plan was just to speak to Scott and say let’s all be civil,’ he explained.
READ MORE: MAFS bride Rachel humiliated as Bec exposes “vulgar” sexual details with groom Steven