It was pretty clear that Married at First Sight Australia ‘intruder’ Billy Vincent was smitten with his new wife Susie Bradley when she walked down the aisle. The 25-year-old single mother made quite the impression on him.
“My first impressions of Susie were, ‘This girl is absolutely stunning. I’ve really hit the jackpot.’ And you see that on the show, I just couldn’t contain how I felt in that moment,” Billy, 28, told TV WEEK.
But after a rocky start, Billy has changed his mind.
“Susie has two faces,” the personal trainer and model tells TV WEEK. “There’s a side she shows other people in the experiment and there’s the side she shows to me. It was really confronting.”
“I’m a big personality,” he adds. “But she really took the mickey and made me quite nervous. I’d been dealt a bad card – and I wanted a refund!”
Susie has directed plenty of barbs Billy’s way, including calling him “awkward,” saying that he “needs to be a man,” and that he “needs to grow some balls.”
She’s the first to admit sensitive Billy isn’t her type and that she’s usually attracted to bad boys. But the show’s relationship experts made it clear that’s no excuse for her behaviour.
“Her treatment of me wasn’t appropriate,” Billy says. “It’s like when someone who’s bullied becomes a bully. She’s been treated like s— by other men.”
Despite their ups and downs, both Billy and Susie chose to stay in the experiment at their first commitment ceremony. For Billy, it wasn’t an easy decision.
“It was such an emotional night for me,” he says. “I had a mini panic attack before it; I was sweating. Susie had been saying I was crazy and overly sensitive about her treatment of me, so I started to believe it.
“I thought there was something wrong with me, and that the experts would say it was true and that maybe I wasn’t the bloke I thought I was.”
Following the commitment ceremony, Susie finds out that Billy isn’t the man she thought he was – he is much more – as his appearance in a charity calendar sets her pulse racing.
Watch: Billy bares all for a charity calendar. Story continues below.
Billy starred as the cover model in the 2017 Manscapes calendar, and has featured in other editions of the calendar, which were shot by his friend John Bortolin. Part of the proceeds are donated to men’s mental health causes.
“My Calendar is a tribute to some of my friends who have lost their lives to suicide,” explains John, who appears in an episode of Married at First Sight in which the calendar is revealed to Susie during groom’s home visits.
So what does she think after seeing her new husband laid bare? “When I saw Billy’s penis I certainly wasn’t not impressed, let’s just put it that way,” she said.
It remains to be seen whether a nude calendar can bring this couple back from the brink of separation.