Abbie Chatfield knows better than most that no one truly goes on reality TV looking for love.
“I said to the girls [from my season of The Bachelor], if you’re here actually for love, you’re lying or there’s something a little bit off about you. Because you would just go on a dating app if that’s all you wanted.”
Australia first met Chatfield when she was a contestant on The Bachelor in 2019, a reality dating show she decided to enter “for an experience and a laugh” – not for the promise of everlasting romance. Through her quick wit and natural charm, she parlayed that platform into an incredibly successful media career that today includes a radio show, a popular podcast and her recent live Trauma Dump tour.
But Chatfield has gone back to her reality TV roots on FBoy Island Australia: a local take on the US dating show (currently at the centre of a copyright dispute) that’s dropping weekly on Binge. That gig, though, is a little different to her first, The Bachelor. For one, Chatfield is there as the host. For another, only some of the contestants are pretending to be there for the “right reasons”.
FBoy Island follows three single women and a group of 24 men vying for their affections, but with a twist: half are “nice guys” allegedly seeking a relationship, and the other half are only in it for a cash prize (these are the self-confessed “FBoys”, a lightly sanitised abbreviation you can probably figure out). If the women choose a “nice guy” at the end, she wins $50,000 to split with him. If she selects an FBoy, though, he gets the $50,000 and can decide whether to keep it all himself.
Instead of competing against each other then, the three female leads must work together to try to sort the bad men from the at least marginally-less-bad men – calling out the “shitty behaviour” as it happens.
“I think it is such an amazing, progressive format,” says Chatfield, who would stay up until 4am bingeing the US version, and was “completely obsessed” with it before signing on. The format also ensures there’s no unexpected “villain edits” of the sort she received on The Bachelor: “Like, if you’re choosing to apply as an FBoy, you can’t really act blindsided when you aren’t seen in the best light.”
Chatfield is speaking to Guardian Australia from a treadmill, half out of breath as she multitasks on a promo day. She defines an FBoy as “someone who doesn’t know who they are, is trying to figure it out, and is doing it in a very toxic way – basically, someone who needs therapy”.
Single women may know them as the guy who pretends to be sweet only until he gets laid; the type who struggles to view women as whole human beings; or, perhaps, simply the one wearing boat shoes. Chatfield has encountered many. “I think we’ve all known fuck boys,” she says with a laugh.
Being savvy, single and sex positive has become a key part of Chatfield’s brand. A former real estate analyst, she applied for the Bachelor at age 23, initially dividing viewers and clashing with castmates for daring to speak openly about her desire for sex. But off the show, she amassed a devoted following with her clever clapbacks to slut shaming, becoming a litmus test for the way you view women: to feel rankled by Abbie suggests you may have some inner work to do.
Outside more TV appearances on shows such as Bachelor in Paradise, I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! and The Masked Singer, Chatfield scored a nightly national radio show, Hot Nights – and her podcast It’s a Lot, in which she discusses topics including sex, mental health and the patriarchy, ranks in the country’s top 10 most listened to. She has her own vibrator, beer and clothing line (currently on pause due to her workload) in an empire that seems to be growing by the day.
But it is her experience in both dating and reality TV that makes her perfectly suited to this particular gig, says Sophie Braham, one of FBoy Island’s writers. (Yes, reality TV has writers; Braham worked with Chatfield on her quips for scenes such as the eliminations.)
“Abbie herself has such credibility as somebody who understands the ins and outs of modern dating,” Braham says. “She really typifies the modern reality TV fairytale, which is not finding love, it’s finding success … instead of just doing tooth-whitening ads on Insta.”
And FBoy Island is, as Braham puts it, “in on the joke” – a show that leans into the fact that it is constructed. When two contestants are told they’re going on “iconic reality TV dates”, they pinch one from the Bachelor: breaking the Guinness world record for longest on-screen kiss. Mid-make-out, the camera pans back from the pashing couple to reveal the guys holding boom mics awkwardly standing by.
“While this is reality TV, we’re aware that we are contriving things to a certain degree,” Chatfield says. “There isn’t a real place called FBoy Island, you know what I mean?” (The show was actually filmed in Casuarina, a coastal town in northern New South Wales.) “But I think the self-awareness makes it so much more fun.”
Brahams sees FBoy Island as a necessary evolution of the typical dating show: reality viewers are more savvy about the formats today, and dating itself has changed dramatically since The Bachelor debuted in 2002.
“There’s this amazing bit where the girls internet stalk the guys – it’s one of my favourite parts, because I’m just like, yes, this is exactly what happens [in real life],” Braham says.
But FBoy Island isn’t just slyly clever – it’s also very funny. Chatfield says “it’s a comedy first and foremost, and reality show second”.
The fact that it was destined to run on streaming service rather than free-to-air gave it freedom to get silly. (“Do you want a nice boy who respects everything that comes out of your mouth?” Chatfield asks in one scene. “Or do you want an FBoy, who only cares about what he can put in it?”)
Chatfield believes the ultimate point is not to scold women for choosing the wrong men, but for men to realise their bad behaviour. She is also proud of FBoy Island’s casting – almost 30% of contestants are people of colour, she says, which she thinks makes it “the most racially diverse dating cast in an Australian TV show”.
So after having been both a contestant and a host on reality TV, which gig is better?
“The host, babe. The host,” Chatfield answers. “I get to have my phone.”
FBoy Island Australia is airing now on Binge
