As a bisexual woman, watching Julia Vogl on season 13 of Married at First Sight Australia was painful. You could’ve made a drinking game out of how often she said “bisexual” — with bonus points every time she mentioned not knowing whether she’d marry a man or a woman. She ultimately married Grayson McIvor, a recruitment company director from the Gold Coast — so, a man. But the fixation on her sexuality didn’t stop there. What followed were frustrating scenes in which her bisexuality was questioned and weaponised by both her partner and fellow contestants, while she was pushed towards physical intimacy on camera. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work out.
Speaking to Julia now, her energy feels completely different from what we saw on-screen. I still recognise the woman from Married at First Sight Australia, but this is someone post-filming, post-online backlash, and, perhaps, post-naivety. And yes, someone shaped by the edit, but we’ll get to that.
Julia Vogl on MAFS Australia
Julia signed up for Married at First Sight Australia because she was “very much single” and struggling to find someone who embodied “both masculine and feminine energy.”
I ask Julia whether her bisexuality was a major focus during the casting process, given how heavily it shaped her storyline on Married at First Sight Australia. “It was a topic, but it wasn't the main topic by any means,” she says. “It's a lengthy interview process, it goes on for months… They do full personality tests, they know exactly who you are and how you're going to respond to things and what your traumas are.”
Julia says the experience left her feeling “super disappointed” when she finally watched the show. “I had no idea that bisexuality would be pretty much the only thing anyone knew about me,” she explains. “I went into a lot of detail about my childhood, my family dynamics, my career. I was sharing all of it, this entire picture of who I was. [My sexuality] certainly wasn't something that I was banging on about. And really, if you look with a critical eye, you can see that it's just the editing.”
As for the show’s repeated focus on her not knowing whether she’d walk down the aisle to a man or a woman, Julia insists: “I only said that one time, and it was in an interview after Grayson and I had met.”
“That wasn't meant to be a main feature of the day at all,” Julia continues. “I didn't care about that. I met him. We did connect.”
The Intimacy Week controversy
Before reality TV, Julia actually worked in journalism and produced social experiments. She previously worked for Cut, where she helped create the wildly viral series Truth or Drink. “I absolutely love curating the questions and sitting with people to watch this natural moment unfold and see where it would go. I was like, ‘Maybe I should finally be the one on the other side of the camera,’” she says.
Suddenly, her Intimacy Week activity makes a lot more sense. Instead of leaning into physical touch, Julia chose to ask Grayson a series of questions in an attempt to build emotional closeness first. Safe to say, Grayson wasn’t impressed, and neither was the expert leading the exercise.
Julia feels she was told, “Your fantasy is incorrect. That wasn't good enough for him, sorry. And Grayson got backed up.”
"And to be honest with you, I'm thinking, what this sexologist is essentially saying to a guy, “Yeah, that girl, she wasn't moving fast enough and that is wrong. You are validated. You need to go and confront her.” Julia is referring to Alessandra Rampolla, who took the lead on Intimacy Week.
Julia remembers Alessandra telling her, "It's Married at First Sight, not Friends at First Sight."
Forced to prove her sexuality
However, Julia wasn’t the only contestant who chose not to dive headfirst into physical intimacy during Intimacy Week. While some couples reached for lingerie and body paint, others took a less sexual approach. Brook wasn’t pressured to become more physical, and neither were Mel or Rachel. So why was Julia treated differently?
Personally, I couldn’t help but wonder whether there was an expectation for Julia to become physically intimate with Grayson in order to “prove” her attraction to men, particularly as fellow contestants seemed increasingly convinced she was only interested in women. Because apparently, a 35-year-old bisexual woman still can’t be trusted to understand her own sexuality.
“I was going to stand on that hill and die on it if I had to, because I do not think that that is a positive message for young women,” Julia tells me. “When a guy is saying to you, ‘This isn't moving fast enough,’ you should bend and go, ‘Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's actually just do something that I'm not comfortable or ready for yet, and let me cross my own boundaries and potentially do something really harmful for myself that I might regret in the future.’ I mean, is that actually the rhetoric that we're pushing here?”
Julia's connection with Grayson
Speaking to Julia, it becomes quite clear that she isn't impressed with how differently she and Grayson were portrayed on MAFS Australia.
“If someone is standing over me, berating me after knowing them for only a couple of weeks, I don't feel safe to move forward and to kiss, to connect on a physical level,” she says. “But for him, that was really important for him to know that he was feeling wanted by me. And I think he felt rejected instead.”
She adds that while there were moments where they were encouraged to connect, the reality of their interactions often felt very different to how it was later shown. “He was standing over me, speaking to me like I was on trial,” she explains. “I said I didn’t want to be spoken to in a condescending way. I just wanted us to slow it down and talk properly.”
Julia also challenges the narrative that she didn’t engage or show interest. “It became this idea that it was all about me and that I never asked him anything, but I did. I wanted to know everything about him,” she says. “Even when I tried to connect through questions, it was criticised. I felt like I was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t."
This is particularly interesting in light of his reaction to her questions during Intimacy Week.
What frustrated her most, she says, was the contrast between their real interactions and how they were presented in the edit. “I think they knew they were going to twist my character into this confused, word-salad woman who doesn’t know what she wants,” she says. “But that wasn’t my experience of what was actually happening between us.”
She also disputes how their emotional and physical connection was portrayed. “I kissed him multiple times. I tried to initiate that connection when it felt right,” she says. “But there was no energy coming back. He later said he wasn’t feeling a ‘burning desire’ either — and that part never made it to air.”
When I ask which cast member differed most compared to their edit, Julia answers immediately: “Honestly, Grayson. I’m sorry to say. Yeah, you were only shown a sliver of him.”
Julia says she reached out a few times after the show but received little response, and hasn’t heard anything since, despite the heavy online backlash following her portrayal on MAFS.
Julia's sexuality was used against her
A common stereotype about bisexuality is that people “can’t make up their mind” — that they’re confused, going through a phase, or indecisive. In reality, bisexuality simply means attraction to more than one gender, not uncertainty about it.
Julia, meanwhile, was edited to appear “rambling” and “flighty.” While it may seem like a storytelling choice, I believe it feeds into broader misconceptions about bisexuality.
“They definitely made out like I was confused or I wasn't being honest, I was being wishy-washy,” Julia explains. “My sexuality was weaponised consistently through the series.”
“I was absolutely reduced to my sexuality,” she says. “And being reduced to your sexuality, it can feel incredibly offensive, because the way that I look at the world, I don't see people for their sexuality at all, I see people for their heart, their integrity, their soul, and that was completely missed. And unfortunately, I hate to say it, my sexuality was 100% used against me in this depiction of who I was.”
Since Married at First Sight Australia aired, Julia says she has been subjected to relentless “biphobia and bullying.”
Looking over Reddit threads, I can see the kind of comments she's receiving. One user wrote, "My guy, Julia, is a lesbian pretending to swing both ways. And she's a d*ck about it, which is funny because she doesn't want any of that.”
“I am a loyal, monogamous woman,” she says. “That means that that is how I act day to day. I could be with a guy, I could be with a girl, I'm going to be monogamous to them. It doesn't mean that I'm looking around or that I am promiscuous.”
We chat to MJ Corey about her long-anticipated book, Dekonstructing the Kardashians.
In Married at First Sight UK, bisexual contestant Leah Tyers was rarely questioned about her sexuality despite also taking things slowly with her partner. Likewise, in this season, queer male couple Sam and Chris were not primarily framed through their sexuality, but through their relationship. Why was it different for a bisexual woman paired with a man?
“I probably would've been better off to go on and just say that I was heterosexual, but that's not true, and that's not honest," Julia reflects.
The dinner party debacles
Obviously, I had to ask Julia about the season’s drama and the screaming matches that erupted at the dinner parties. In those scenes, she and Grayson are often shown sitting on the sidelines, watching with wide eyes, largely uninvolved.
“The stakes are really high, emotions are high, and essentially your every move is being documented. And so, when you involve alcohol, and I'm not saying that that's an excuse, but when you heighten things with alcohol, emotions, exhaustion, and perhaps an inability in some of these women to regulate themselves and think about… There was just a lot of ego. It was like that mean girl energy of I'm going to back my bestie no matter what.”
“I've never been in a room like that before. I wasn't prepared for that,” she continues. “There was a need to be in the cool clique or whatever it was from some people. And again, just really immature behaviour and so disappointing.”
At Julia’s final dinner party, she was pulled into the narrative when Bec claimed that Gia had said Julia actually wanted to be paired with a woman on the show. What followed saw her bisexuality once again dissected and weaponised in the midst of the group conflict.
Julia acknowledges the moment had little to do with her directly. “I think what upset me the most is that then somehow, even though it was hearsay, validated this belief in Grayson that I did actually prefer a woman.”
She adds that a heated argument followed, later shown in MAFS After the Dinner Party, culminating in a tearful moment that didn’t fully capture what led up to it.
Post-filming, Julia met her now-girlfriend, who has since watched the episodes alongside her. She acknowledges, however, that the relationship has been used to reinforce the narrative that she never truly wanted to be with a man. “I'm so grateful that this beautiful woman has walked into my life," Julia says. "It's the best relationship I've ever had and it makes the story so much better for the show, which is you really wanted a woman all along. And she could literally be in a man's body, and I would feel the same way, because it's her heart, I've fallen in love with her heart.”
Instagram content
The comments on this post prove her point.
“I think the whole time, you wanted to be with a woman more than you wanted to be with a man,” one user accuses.
“Lesbian from the start of mafs 100%” and “Yeah the rumours were true” others write.
I ask her what she thinks needs to change around bisexual representation in reality television.
“I think that bisexual stories need to be written in and shown in a positive light,” she says. “It happens at the top. It has got to be the producers or the storyline producers who are pushing narratives and positive representations of bi people and showing that bisexuals aren't confused or unloyal.”
Ultimately, that's what she feels was missing from her own portrayal. “It's not a topic of conversation for me. I was there as Jules with Grayson, which is exactly how I wanted it to be. I didn't intend to be the bi girl.”
You can follow Julia Vogl on Instagram, or through her media trainings at Talk is Cheap.
Glamour reached out to Channel 9 for comment.
