MasterChef star Melissa Leong admits dealing with “appalling racism” from social media trolls
MasterChef judge Melissa Leong has opened up about receiving endless amounts of racist abuse since she debuted on the Network 10 program earlier this year
The 38-year-old, who is of Singapore-Chinese heritage, has candidly addressed the vile backlash in a brave interview with TV Week magazine by explaining: “When it happens to you every day of your life, you develop a way to cope.”
She went on to say she does her best to deal with the vitriol with intelligence and humour.
“The best thing is to greet it with intelligence, humour and maybe some empathy, because you can't sink to that level yourself,” she said.
Leong did admit though that some days are harder than others to follow her own advice.
“There are days when I'm blindsided and feel this palpable jolt to the chest. But having tremendous friends like Andy and Jock helps, we have each other's backs,” she said.
Asian Australians have made up one-third of the contestants on MasterChef this season, and Melissa says she couldn’t be prouder of the diversity on the program when speaking to The Herald Sun.
“Everybody deserves to be seen and to be heard. Regardless of whether that is your culture, your language, who you love, your ability, or the way you chose to live your life, everybody deserves to be seen and be heard,” she said.
Contestants Brendan Pang, Khanh Ong, Reynold Poernomo and Poh Ling Yeow are all of Asian descent, as are Sarah Tiong, Jess Liemantara and Amina Elshafei, who is of Korean and Egyptian descent.
MasterChef: Back to Win has also been praised for being the most diverse in the show's history.
Some of its contestants included a number of openly gay constants such as Brendan Pang, Reece Hignell, Courtney Roulston and Khanh Ong.
Melissa recently hinted she would be returning for the thirteenth season of MasterChef, after the 2019 season proved to be a major ratings victory.
“I’m open-minded to the possibility of doing MasterChef season 13,” she told Who magazine.