Married At First Sight groom Danny Hewitt's brutal confession after scandal, leaked rant and behind-the-scenes bombshells: 'I was a coward and ashamed of my wife'

He arrived on screens as the tattooed English charmer who promised to be a gentleman - but Danny Hewitt later admitted he was the first person fooled by that image.

With the cameras long switched off and the dust barely settled on one of MAFS' most turbulent seasons, the Melbourne-based businessman pulled no punches.

'I thought I was a gentleman going onto MAFS,' Danny told Daily Mail with a wry laugh. 'But I've come to realise - maybe I'm not. Maybe I needed to work on myself.'

It was a disarming admission from a man whose time on the show had been dogged by controversy.

Danny was at the centre of the drama after a scandalous night out at Icebergs where he admitted another bride was more his type, a leaked clip aimed at fellow bride Steph, and a string of remarks about wife Bec Zacharia that set social media alight.

But sitting down for his most comprehensive interview since filming wrapped, Danny said he was ready to take ownership of it all - and to tell the side of the story that, he insisted, never made it to screen.

Few lines from the season landed with quite the same thud as Danny's quip that he could 'find a better girl in Coles.'

Bec's supporters were outraged. Danny said the reaction still haunted him - but insisted the remark had been directed at behaviour, not looks.

'I was more referring to her behaviour,' he explained. 'I don't want to sit here and say she's a bad person, she's not. But things were heated, you're tired, you're on the experiment.'

He also defended the '15 out of ten' line that accompanied it, characterising it as classic British dry humour that landed badly on Australian television.

'There's no such thing as a 15 out of ten. I don't even think there's a ten out of ten, because you're calling someone perfect... no one's perfect. That's tongue-in-cheek English banter.'

He did not, however, offer the same defence for what came next.

The leaked audio clip in which Danny was heard directing a vicious verbal outburst toward fellow intruder bride Steph Marshall shocked viewers - and shocked Danny himself when he heard it played back.

He was categorical: there was no excuse.

'Disgusting behaviour,' he said flatly.

He clarified that Steph had briefly approached the group before walking away, and that the rant had continued after she had gone.

'It doesn't make it any better whether I said it to her face or not to her face.'

More surprisingly, Danny said he was grateful production had chosen to air the clip.

'I'm actually, in a way, glad they put it in. Because I thought I was a better person than what I am watching it,' he said.

'Sometimes you can go through life and not see a problem with the way you act. When you hear it, you actually go - I'm an idiot, a scumbag. If I was a good person, I wouldn't have acted like that, would I? It's a blessing. Now I can look at it, address it, become a better person.'

One of the most explosive claims Danny made concerned the moments viewers never saw: two separate commitment ceremonies at which he wrote 'Leave', only to be ushered into a private room and talked back from the ledge by producers.

'I wrote leave a couple of times, but I was talked out of it,' he said.

'They'd take me in a room and say, you're going to look like a bloke who walks away too early. And I should have stuck to my guns. That's something I do regret.'

The first time he wrote 'Leave' came after the third dinner party - the one that followed the Icebergs fallout.

'That was way too much for me. At that point I couldn't really see a future with her.'

He said he was persuaded to change his card after producers argued that leaving at that moment, while Bec was publicly defending him over the Gia allegations, would make him appear guilty and ungrateful.

'I could see their point of view,' he conceded - though he remained clear he should have trusted his own instincts.

The evening at Icebergs - when Danny and Bec broke MAFS rules by attending a social event with Gia and Scott - remained one of the season's defining moments.

Danny said he had long regretted going, though he had since made a kind of peace with it.

'I did for a long time go, why the f*** did I go there? I caused so much hell in my life,' he said.

He suggested the evening had been largely orchestrated by Gia, who he claimed had called Bec persistently to persuade them to attend.

'She just wanted a night out, she wanted to break the rules, and she just didn't want to be the only person caught doing it, I reckon.'

The aftermath saw the entire cast summoned to a chaotic production meeting held in Scott's apartment, where MAFS introduced drug testing for the first time in the show's history.

Danny said he was singled out with dark humour by the series producer.

'She goes to me: 'Did you do any, Danny?' And I was like, 'Drug test me now, I couldn't care less.' And she goes: 'You'd be the first on my list - keys from London, covered in tattoos.'

He laughed: 'I just cracked a joke back.'

For all the external controversy, Danny said the real struggle of his time on MAFS had been a quieter, more private one: trying to grow a genuine connection with Bec while watching her behaviour at group dinner parties fill him with a feeling he hadn't expected.

'I wanted someone I could always be proud of,' he said. 'And it's not a nice feeling to be ashamed of your partner.'

'At certain points during the experiment - especially at the dinner parties - I was ashamed of Bec.'

He stressed repeatedly that behind closed doors, Bec could be 'the most amazing, most lovely person ever,' which made the public scenes all the more frustrating.

'I'm like: I know how beautiful and how nice you can be. But then you go on TV in front of a group of people calling people the C-word - as your partner, it's very hard to defend that or be proud of that.'

He was equally frank about his own failure to challenge her.

'The hardest thing a man can call himself is a coward,' he said - repeating, he revealed, words he had actually spoken during his final vows that were cut from the broadcast.

'And I said: during this experiment, I have acted cowardly. Looking back, was I a coward by not calling Bec out on her actions more? Yeah. Absolutely. 100 per cent.'

Danny remained careful throughout to avoid a character assassination of his TV wife.

He praised her warmth and, most emphatically, her willingness to own her mistakes.

'Bec is very good at taking accountability. Probably the best on the whole show. She's the GOAT at taking accountability.'

He added a caveat.

'If you apologise and then keep doing the same thing again - are you taking full accountability? She did make the same mistake a few times.'

He also pushed back on the idea that the two had been miserable together.

'People don't understand how well me and Bec actually got on. I'd sit here and argue to anyone that we got on as well as most people in the experiment. We'd always have a great laugh - and I don't think that was portrayed on screen that well.'

Asked whether he had ever been genuinely attracted to her, he was firm.

'Yeah, I was. But even watching it back - it doesn't look like I'm into Bec. Every time we'd get a bit of momentum, it would get chopped at the legs because something would happen.'

'I was the man on the experiment just trying to give it everything I had.'