“The Israeli public has a hard time with a girl with curves, breasts, a bit of a belly, and a typecast”

Noy Ittah (30) is not the typical character one expects to see on a matchmaking reality show. A programmer from Tel Aviv who has already experienced a long nine-year relationship, marriage, and divorce, she arrived at "Married at First Sight" (a new episode tonight, Keshet 12, and on Sunday the decision episode) when her heart was indeed free, according to her, but something in life was stuck. Her relationship with the groom she was matched with, Aviatar Dangur, knew ups and downs, while at the same time it seems the discourse around her focused more than once precisely on what she chose not to do: not to show physical intimacy in front of the cameras, or not to enter the hot tub in a swimsuit on a couples' weekend. In an interview for the "Spill It" podcast, Ittah does not give spoilers now for her and her groom's decision, about whom she has a few things to say, and talks about the next goals - in one she wears a wedding dress again at her wedding (it hasn't happened yet as I imagined), and in another she is not necessarily wearing clothes.

Can it be said that there is a bit of cheating here? You are not some eternal single - you were in a long relationship, you got married, you got divorced. I want to tell you - is it hard for you to find love? How did you come to reality?

True, I understand your question. In the end, I really didn't come as the eternal single. Even after my long relationship, I was in a relationship again for almost a year, a little less. I just found myself in a recurring loop, just the same thing all the time. Finding myself with friends introducing me to people and I go out, and something there doesn't happen for me. And I meet someone who is amazing and I go out with him for a month - and something doesn't happen.

Therefore, even what happens on the screen doesn't surprise me, that something doesn't explode for me, and I am actually not one of the women who believe in some crazy Disney love. I am looking for the truth and simplicity. However, I would always go out and something wouldn't happen, and in the last year before "Married at First Sight" I felt it really strongly. That I go out with people whom at another time I would have fallen in love with. "What's wrong? What's happening to me?"

So it was an attempt to break the pattern?

Could be. And I felt that I just needed to change the energy around me. Because the circles of friends to introduce me had run out a bit, and the weddings I would meet people at had run out, and I was also fed up with the apps in some way. So it's true that I am not the eternal single of many years and I also had two years of singleness that I loved, and I enjoyed them and grew from them. But when I decided that I want something serious and I am ready for it and expecting it, then it's like something there got stuck for me. I said, 'I am ready to do everything, I want to understand for a moment what is not right'.

Any other person would go to a psychologist. I am in therapy.

Aviatar is really not my typecast

Ittah, who defines herself as naive and says she didn't watch the show at all, tells that alongside the experience that brought her to participate in it, she came sober. It's not that I came and said 'Married at First Sight' will save me. But I was looking for the thing that would change the flow around me. Maybe there is someone here waiting for me - and there are experts. According to her, you come to find love, and you go through a very long period of screening and therapy with the experts, and you also really believe in it. You thought at first it was reality, you call it reality - in my head it's not reality.

Let's talk about Aviatar. The meeting at the chuppah, what did you feel?

First of all, at first glance, I must say, I calmed down. I calmed down. Like, it might sound a bit strange with our conversation at the winery [on the couple's honeymoon where she told him he is not my typecast]. I remember that before the wedding I really sat and said 'God', I really spoke to God and said to him, 'Just let it be someone I will feel comfortable with first of all, that he will be a person who will respect me, that he will be a good person'. I calmed down because in the end... Aviatar doesn't need much, you see him. You see his eyes and you understand that it is a good person, a person you will feel comfortable with.

According to her, it was the first white flag to the person I am going to marry, to live with him now for 42 days in the same house, to fly with him for a honeymoon... And suddenly this was my whole request, someone I will have fun with, that I will feel comfortable with, and when I saw him I calmed down.

And yet, after a few days in France you tell him that he is not your type. You received a lot of criticism for this. Why was it necessary?

Even my sister asked in real-time, before the criticism. If I were sitting with Aviatar on a date now, I wouldn't sit and talk to him and bring up this topic. Because if it seemed wrong to me, I would get up and leave, I wouldn't see a need for this discourse. But there is really a situation here that is complex. There are cameras that you can't forget about. Aviatar and I really had a covenant that we made on the wedding night, we returned to the room and said: 'No matter what, we tell each other the truth at every stage, even if it's not pleasant. Even if it's painful'. This was really the agreement between us. I also really remember that I said to him, 'Say what you want, I accept everything, I am open to hear everything you have to say, but let's not be surprised and get hurt after that', like, in retrospect in a year.

There were situations in the program where, mainly men, had a very negative opinion or said things and didn't reflect it to the brides, and there was a lot of criticism about them.

Yes... This conversation was driven by Aviatar. He initiated it and I really appreciated it and was happy, it is also something that made me understand, okay, I am here with a person who has a set of values that is identical, and how fun that this is the thing he opens up.

When he told you to tell the whole truth?

Yes. Of a moment let's talk as if open. A kind of gave a starting shot of good words - but let's also coordinate expectations. And at the winery we received a letter from the psychologists in which they address us - our letter was not shown, but they address us and they are like wondering where we are, and if we are in the same place and if we are synchronized. And Aviatar said there that yes, that he thinks we are synchronized. And it was important for me to come and be honest with him, and tell him that I am for a moment in a place that is a bit probably different, because he is really not my typecast. And yet, I still feel that there is something to work on here. It's not, 'you are not and come on, as far as I'm concerned we can go home', and it's not in the name of the process - this is what was important for me to note. It's because it's him, who he is. That I still feel comfortable with him and I have fun and I am not repulsed, even from the closeness and the touch. And then they say: 'Okay, so why say that?'. I felt that I couldn't really let go with him and not be real with him. And I can say something that is not known: on the first day, on the honeymoon, there was some attempt at closeness on his part and I was less interested. And after this typecast conversation - that's where the closeness was created, because there I already understood that he knows where I am. I am not misleading anyone, he knows exactly what I feel and here I can really try. Like, it released something in me.

And that evening that you saw that we are laughing, he is brushing my teeth... it happened after the conversation. In my opinion, it gave a lot. Was it right? I don't know. It could be that I could have skipped it and things would have progressed differently, could be. But at that moment I didn't feel that I could let go and move forward with him and for that matter kiss him, when the truth is not open before him and when tomorrow I am going to Yael the psychologist and talking to her about it.

After a few days he comes and raises this topic again and says: you are not my typecast. As a woman to a woman, - a bit returns to you. Why did you remember now? There was already the discourse, we progressed. What is relevant?

I need to put Aviatar's side here for a moment, because it was really an unfilmed conversation. We were in the pool, having fun, and he returned from a testa, these are things that you as if don't see. But he returned and he said to me: 'Tell me, what's the story? Like, is there a chance that the typecast thing takes up much more space for you? Because they don't stop asking me about it'. It really scared him, why they keep talking to him about it, and I said: 'No. I told you what I felt, as far as I'm concerned I put it behind me at that moment'.

According to Ittah, later Dangur told her that he himself said in that same testa that she is not his style. And then I was very hurt. Now, I was hurt not from the place of 'I am not someone's typecast'. It's never pleasant to hear, but that wasn't the point because fact, two days ago I said it. These were two days that we also progressed and also in some place it did hurt Aviatar, as much as he understood that it released something in me - in the end it is an unpleasant thing. It hurt him in some way and I felt uncomfortable with it. And I walked around with an unpleasant feeling and they keep asking you about it. And then suddenly I say to him, 'Wait, so if you also felt like that, why didn't you tell me? Why did you let me be alone with this bad feeling?' And there it hurt me very, very much, that I walked around with a heavy feeling of discomfort towards him, that maybe I as if hurt him, and then in the end you also feel like that - and it's okay, just say it.

I wouldn't have stayed alone. Yes, really, it's really that.

There was everything that is between spouses. Just not in front of the cameras

Ittah's boldness to raise a simple fact very quickly led to a discussion about her body, but from her point of view it's not the story at all. It sounds as if a bit like victimizing, and I also said that - they kind of appropriated me to be an ambassador of a certain beauty model in the program. It's also the editing and also the audience, they kind of put me into some template... I am the 'ambassador of the full and non-thin beauty model' - I didn't come for that, I came to be Noy. I didn't know it would even spark a discourse in this world. I love myself as I am, if I don't love myself - and there are days like that, I go and change, I go and work on it.

You also got a lot for this matter. There were not simple talkbacks of who are you to define typecast. That it was a bit terrible. I talked about it a lot in relation to the amount I got to talk to the world. Yes, I felt that in the end the audience, maybe the Israeli one, has a hard time accepting that there is a girl who is not 60-90-60, by the way, that is also no longer the beauty model, it is less, but okay, I wish it was. But it's hard to accept a girl who is not skinny and has a butt and breasts and a bit of a belly and has a typecast.

You felt that they defined you in the program as the full bride?

Sure, obviously. It was said... not from the production, from the audience. It can also be said a bit from the editing. A lot of sentences that I said and were taken precisely to places of insecurity, that whoever knows me laughs and sends me messages: 'Who tells them that someone needs to land you sometimes?'... And in the typecast discourse, there was a lot of 'Who does she think she is? Did she see how she looks?' or all kinds of things like that. In general, from our wedding episode, it was immediately decided and determined that he is not attracted to me. It's an unpleasant feeling. But then following that conversation, where they actually entered my character and started saying that I did it from a place of fear - that was the main reaction, that was the mood, that I did it from a place of fear because I knew he was going to reject me - why? Why do people even assume that this is what I thought? This was not my feeling at any stage. This was not a feeling that I didn't receive from him... And also for him, an injustice was done in some place, because that's also not what he broadcasted to me. This is not what was and this is what was decided.

On the couples' weekend, Ittah sparked another discussion after she refused to enter the hot tub in a swimsuit, unlike others. After she responded to the matter last month, now she says: there are things that in my opinion are intimate and are only behind closed doors, and in the end I didn't see fit, not to kiss in front of people and cameras and also not to enter a hot tub, which is very, very small and you splash on each other, and it is very intimate, and it stemmed solely from that.

Very intimate or because of the swimsuit?

I packed for the couples' weekend between five to seven swimsuits, okay? If there was a regular, normal pool, I would have done a water war and chicken fights on Aviatar. There is no question at all. 16 people, first time in my life, with another million staff members, I don't want to walk in front of them in my tiny bikini. By the way, it's also not related only to the cameras. Not long ago it was a good friend's birthday on a yacht, I put on a swimsuit and tied a scarf because I don't want my butt to be in the faces of people I don't know yet.

Did it bother you that they linked it immediately to weight?

Yes, sure. It's annoying because A is not the story, but that I don't need to prove to anyone, that I know in my heart... I didn't think about what people would think. This is the truth. I am a fairly naive person. I didn't know how much discourse this program sparks.

Would you enter in a swimsuit now?

To this specific tub no. Definitely not. A million percent no. I am a person with principles. I told Aviatar - they didn't show it, that it's really intimate for me, it's tough for me how intimate it is.

Unlike perhaps other couples, Leiki and Tomer, for example, who struggle throughout the season to function in the intimate sector, Ittah admits that between her and Dangur it is actually the click, despite the gap in typecasts it turns out. Dangur even declared in a story that there was contact between the two already on the honeymoon, except that we didn't see anything on the screen.

There was everything. Everything that is between spouses, I won't detail it here but there was everything. And it's something that isn't seen. And it's also something that they asked me, 'Do you regret not creating more contact?' I said 'no', because that's really what I felt was right for that moment. Come on, I'm not an actress, I'm not Rotem Sela. And it's amazing that other people managed to do it.

On this weekend you watched others showing clinginess. From the side you look, how are the feelings?

I am a person who is so focused on herself. It didn't interest me where other couples are. I know where I am, I work with Aviatar, we work on our things, we know that we are not in the place where we would want to be. Where other couples are, it really interested me less.

I hear you talking about Aviatar, that you are very, very good friends, and there is sexuality behind the scenes and the discourse is open and there is support, mutual understanding of principles and values - exactly the things on which a relationship is based. Look, I can't give you a spoiler of what happened in the end, if we overcame it or not, but there is no doubt that all the things you said are a basis for a good relationship.

After you experienced another kind of wedding, do you see yourself standing again under the chuppah in real life?

Yes. I am surprised by myself. I thought I wouldn't want to get married a third time - and not a second. I always said, if I find a partner for whom it will be important, I will get married again. And then suddenly I realized that no, I want to get married. I really want to.

Is there a chance we will see you combining programming with the entertainment world? Maybe campaigns?

At work they laugh at me: 'Ah, so now you will do such a campaign and leave the job'. I'm like 'no, guys, I love my job'. I advanced during this period, I am really now in a new role. But for now it's really fun for me, I really enjoy, from the fact that girls consult with me... I will never refuse money if along the way I do something that is pleasant and nice for me, yes, why not?

And lingerie modeling?

Sure. And then you won't tell me 'it's like this or like that'.