After selling their home for $3.620 million and being crowned winners of The Block, newlywed couple Tess and Luke have a lot to celebrate.
They’re walking away from the series with the $630,000 they made selling their home above reserve, plus $100,000 in prize-money.
Though they’re beyond excited by the result, the pair have complained about coming across as “lazy” in the show’s editing. In fact, before the auction, Tess told media that the couple were regretting going on the series.
“We spoke out about how we were feeling and we were really honest about everything; we absolutely were portrayed to be lazy,” Tess tells TV WEEK after their win. “No one can really dispute that.”
Tess says the couple never “expected” to make money on The Block, and were on the show for the experience. As such, the depiction of them as lazy, and the accusations from fans, made them that much more upset.
“You don’t go in thinking you will get money at the end of the day, because you won’t necessarily,” she says.
“We all said to each other that your experience on the show was what you won, and we just weren’t enjoying it.
“If [the experience] was all we had, we were just really upset that you couldn’t see this magnificent build we did and all the hard work we were putting in.
“We were just upset that we were looking that way, but we have always been grateful to the show and never denied that.”
Tess and Luke celebrate their victory.
(Image: Nine Network)The couple also spoke of the show’s monster build, which host Scott Cam has admitted was too big.
“We s–t ourselves,” Tess says of finding out they were competing on ‘the biggest Block ever.’
The couple, who applied four times for the hit show, are “so proud” of winning the intimidating season. Despite claims the show will back down next year, Tess is convinced it will be equally as challenging for the contestants.
“I think they definitely won’t go as big, but there’ll be something,” Tess says. “You can’t get five couples to face something impossible and make it happen, and then go to ‘oh we’ll make it easy now.’ They know what people are capable of doing.
“They’ll be smaller houses, I bet, but they’ll make it harder some other way. It will be a challenge no matter what.”
For the full list of auction day results, head here.
Tess and Luke were upset to see fans calling them lazy.
(Image: Nine Network)The new season will almost definitely be smaller, with Scott telling TV WEEK: “I think, in hindsight, we knew it was always going to be big, but we probably won’t do something that big again.”
However, Tess could be right in thinking a different kind of surprise will be in store for the Blockheads in 2020.
Season Sixteen will see the new blockheads working on a huge block of land in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton.
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