Laura Sharrad said she knew she had won MasterChef Australia months before the result was shown to viewers, after she and fellow finalist Callum Hann struck a rare deal with producers in 2025 to learn the outcome early.
Sharrad said the reveal came in what she described as a boardroom-style meeting, with only a few important people in the room. The arrangement was tightly controlled. She said both finalists were allowed to tell just one person each, and both chose their partners. The show also filmed two endings to keep the result secret until broadcast.
For a franchise built on suspense, the arrangement was a break from the norm. MasterChef Australia finalists are usually kept in the dark until the episode airs, with the winner guarded until the last possible moment. Sharrad said this time the production team agreed to tell her and Hann straight away because they did not want to wait three months to find out.
“I knew that I won,” Sharrad said, describing the moment as “a very boardroom kind of meeting” that was “very like quick and confidential with a few important people in the room.” She said the decision to learn the result early came after both finalists had spent so long filming that the uncertainty had become its own burden. “It was just something that we were like, we don’t want to wait three months to know,” she said.
The disclosure also had a personal edge for Sharrad, who said she had been through a version of the same wait before. In 2014, she said, she flew to Melbourne, sat in a room with executives at 10, and heard the actual scores for herself and Brent. She recalled the judges being present and said one of the lines read out to them was, “We gave you an eight.”
That earlier reveal came on the day the episode aired, and Sharrad said she then flew home and hosted a finale party only hours later. She said the 2021 season, which she also competed in, was filmed during the pandemic, adding another layer of uncertainty to a format already defined by secrecy.
What made the 2025 arrangement unusual was not just that Sharrad and Hann learned the result in advance, but that the show bent its own rules to do it. The final was still protected by two endings, but the key surprise was gone for the people who lived it. Sharrad said the return home felt strange because she already knew the outcome after months of filming.
For viewers, the suspense remained intact until the episode aired. For the finalists, the story ended in a quiet room long before the broadcast, with the result locked down by a deal that changed the usual MasterChef Australia playbook.
