The Block: Team accused of cheating following room reveal
The Block judge Shaynna Blaze felt like she was experiencing some deja vu after first entering Jas and Luke's kid's bedroom renovation, however, she thought at the time she was mistaken and gave the couple a perfect score of 10.
However, she later decided to do an Internet search and realised it was very similar to a room that previous Block contestants Kyal and Kara had shared to Instagram not long before.
Speaking with TV Week, Shaynna said, "I thought: 'I'm just going to have a look' – and I found an identical one."
"There are one or two teeny-tiny tweaks, but it's literally a carbon copy!"
RELATED
She continued, "We're not into copy-and-pasting... And not only that, it takes months and expertise to put all that together – the research, actually finding all those pieces."
"When you present it in a competition and say, 'I put this together', it's like, 'Well, no you haven't! You just copied somebody else's hard work and claimed it as your own.'"
Shaynna explained to the couple that taking inspiration is fine, but taking it too far means you're not playing fair.
The couple, however, told the publication they hadn't cheated.
Jas said, "Australia, we are not cheats," adding she had Kyal and Kara's photo as inspiration in a mood board and had shown it to the crew, their tradies and even in front of the cameras and to producers.
"If I were cheating, I probably wouldn't have been so open about it!"
She continued, saying that there are no set of rules you receive when you start on The Block, so the only way they could have broken a rule would be if they'd been told it's a rule.
"I know for a fact that other contestants did the same for rooms in their houses this season and in previous seasons. None of us are designers – we're just ordinary people having a crack at something very unfamiliar. We need all the help we can get."
Click here to sign up to our daily newsletter to get all the latest news and hacks. Or if you have a story tip, email us at lifestyle.tips@verizonmedia.com.
