Married At First Sight groom reveals major career change as he prepares to move to Los Angeles: 'It's a massive gamble'

Married At First Sight groom Tristan Black is swapping dinner parties for Hollywood auditions as he prepares to walk away from his life in Australia and chase an unlikely new career overseas.

The 2024 reality star has revealed to Daily Mail that he is packing up and moving to Los Angeles, where he hopes to establish himself as a DJ and break into acting.

And Tristan isn't treating the move as an extended holiday.

The former MAFS groom, 33, is planning to relocate for at least a year and admits he is taking an enormous financial risk by walking away from the steady work and career he has already built in Sydney.

'Huge financial gamble,' Tristan admitted.

'Obviously I've got consistent work here and everything like that, and I'm literally starting fresh, so it's basically a massive financial gamble.'

Tristan shot to fame on season 11 of Married At First Sight in 2024 when he was matched with Cassandra Allen.

The couple quickly became one of the experiment's most talked-about pairings, with Tristan winning over viewers with his vulnerability and candid discussions about his confidence and insecurities.

However, the pair struggled to turn their friendship into a romantic relationship and ultimately left the experiment separately.

Two years on, Tristan is still looking for love, but his immediate focus is now firmly on a very different kind of relationship - with Hollywood.

'So the big thing's happening. I am packing up, moving up my life,' he told Daily Mail.

'I need to try to expand my career as I'm a DJ. I want to be moving into acting and whatnot, and the best place to do it is the land of dreams, LA.'

While MAFS viewers may not associate Tristan with DJ decks or auditions, he revealed he has actually been DJing for seven years.

He also quietly began training as an actor over the past year, keeping the ambition largely under wraps.

'I've been working on that for about a year, but I've kept it really quite close to the chest and whatnot,' he explained.

'But I've always kind of dreamt of being a bit of an actor.'

And his first acting credit came long before reality television.

'I was a robot in year nine drama,' Tristan laughed.

Since then, however, he has taken things considerably more seriously.

Tristan has been attending weekly acting classes, reading scripts and auditioning for television roles as he attempts to build experience before his move.

'I've been doing my acting classes once a week, been reading scripts, been going to a couple of TV auditions and whatnot,' he said.

'Nothing's been landed yet, obviously.

'Maybe I'm not meant to be an actor, but, you know, I just want to be that success story where it's like there's $2 in my bank account and then I finally land my career job.'

Asked what kind of role he would love to land, Tristan didn't hesitate.

'Look, to be honest, if they did a Friends reboot, I'd love to be Chandler,' he said.

His ambitions span both comedy and drama, although DJing will remain his main focus when he first lands in the US.

'DJing is obviously my main kind of focus. I mean, I've been doing it for seven years. I love it, I'm passionate about it. I'm good at it, I believe,' he said.

'I feel like I'm about to give America a big Tristan storm, you know?'

The dream is to base himself in Los Angeles while travelling across the US for gigs.

Tristan has his sights set on New York, Texas and Las Vegas, with one particular job sitting at the top of his wish list.

'I mean, the dream would be to get a residency at one of the Vegas pool clubs, to be honest. It would be unreal,' he said.

Success, he added, would mean securing several residencies and landing bigger festival or main-stage opportunities.

'Mate, if I can get a couple of residencies, some main stage work and just overall an amazing time, then I reckon I've done it.'

But Tristan also has a brutally simple benchmark for knowing when the American dream has failed.

'If I'm homeless,' he joked.

'If I become homeless and have to fly back after four months.'

The decision to relocate began seriously forming around four months ago when Tristan realised he was tired of putting off the move.

'It's just time. Getting a bit older. I decided that it's just absolutely time,' he said.

'You've only got one life and you've got to give it the best shot you can, and change is always good.'

He is now in the process of finalising his visa and says the relocation is intended to be long term.

'This is actually more of a permanent move,' he said.

'So I'm just about to get my visa approved and whatnot, so I'd be going for a minimum a year, but hopefully a lot longer.'

Perhaps the most daunting part is leaving behind the friends and career network he has spent years building in Australia.

'Well, this is the scary part. I'm obviously leaving my friends, but in saying that, though, friends, no matter where the distance are still friends,' he said.

'But it's more that it feels like I'm starting fresh with my career.

'I mean, obviously, I built a solid foundation here in Sydney and Australia and whatnot, and it feels like I'm restarting again overseas, but it's the way that I have to do it.'

It won't be Tristan's first experience living in America.

Before finding fame on MAFS, he spent a year living in Charleston, South Carolina, while working aboard cruise ships.

'I used to live in Charleston, South Carolina for a year,' he revealed.

'That's where I first fell in love with America, especially down south in Charleston.

'And then I've been back about two or three times just to explore New York, California, just all that kind of stuff.'

His decision to pursue acting also comes after Tristan deliberately avoided promoting his DJ career during his time on Married At First Sight.

While contestants are often accused of joining reality shows to grow their profiles or businesses, Tristan said he was determined not to give viewers any reason to question why he had signed up.

'I didn't want to be the dude that goes on and they're just like, 'Hey, he's just trying to be here to help boost his career,'' he said.

'So I was actually genuinely looking for love and whatnot and trying to make things work and stuff like that.

'I always knew that if I was meant to be a DJ, I was meant to make it work. I couldn't just use the platform to do it.'

However, with the benefit of hindsight, Tristan can now laugh about that decision.

'Don't get me wrong, now I kind of wish I did it as well,' he joked.

He also admitted he failed to fully capitalise on the influencer opportunities that came his way following MAFS.

'For the first year afterwards, not really. You go to a lot of events, like you go to a lot of parties and a lot of events and that's a lot of fun,' he said.

But Tristan said success after reality television requires contestants to continually put themselves out there, something he struggled with.

'If you want to get an influencing career, which I've been trying to work on, you've got to regularly post and actually get out there,' he said.

'I've been very slack on it. I don't really post. I get too self-conscious, which is something I'm working on.'

He added: 'The people that are doing really well for influencing careers are the ones that are actually posting and, you know, finding out what their brand is and moving forward for that.

'So yes, did I get heaps of influencing work? I did all right. Could I have got a lot more? Definitely.'

Despite leaving his MAFS chapter behind professionally, Tristan remains friendly with several members of his cast.

'I love speaking to big old Uncle Jono,' he said of Jonathan McCullough.

'I spoke to big old Tim Smith the other day. I speak to Ellie as well.

'If I'm ever in Queensland or Melbourne, I catch up with basically everyone.'

And his search for love isn't necessarily over either.

Asked whether he could ever be convinced to walk back into the experiment for another shot at marriage, Tristan admitted he wouldn't rule it out.

'To be honest, I feel like if they would offer it to me, yeah, I would. Of course I would,' he said.

'I was still trying to find the love of my life, but I probably would do it again as well.

'It's never one and done.'

And should Hollywood fail completely, Tristan has already devised an escape plan.

'If it all doesn't work out, I'm just going to get a shack on the Bahamas beaches or the Caribbean and just be a bartender, you know?' he joked.