‘What’s the MAFS guy doing here?’ John Aiken on following in Nigel Latta’s footsteps

Married at First Sight Australia expert John Aiken reveals why making a documentary inspired by the work of Nigel Latta was the best TV experience of his life. 

John Aiken was nervous when he first sat down to chat with some well-known New Zealanders for his new documentary series Lessons on Living. The Australian psychologist was about to ask his famous guests to open up to him about some of their darkest and most difficult times, and Aiken – best known here as an expert on controversial reality series Married at First Sight Australia – was worried about how they might respond. “Would they sit there and go, ‘what's the MAFS guy doing here?’” 

But Aiken didn’t need to worry. The guests in question were also there to talk about the enduring wisdom of clinical psychologist Nigel Latta, and Aiken says their shared familiarity with Latta’s work made it easy to connect. Aiken is the presenter of Lessons on Living, a new three-part series inspired by Latta’s best-selling book of the same name, which offers simple tools to deal with life's toughest moments. The book was shaped by Latta's own experience of coping with an incurable cancer diagnosis, and was published one day after Latta's death in 2025. 

Aiken’s role in the docu-series is to carry on the conversations that Latta started, and while he never met Latta in person, Aiken says Latta’s work had a huge impact on him. Throughout his own psychology career, Aiken admired the way Latta made complex issues easy to understand, and appreciated how his no-nonsense, direct language appealed to New Zealanders from all sorts of backgrounds. “He didn't get heavily bogged down in psycho-babble. He was all about: if there's a problem, here's what you do about it, and it was always backed by science.” 

The docu-series is a mix of pragmatic advice, social experiments and inspiring conversations with people like Gilbert Enoka, Lucy Hone, Benee and Shaun Johnson. Each episode explores one of Latta’s three core principles about how to build resilience and deal with grief, illness and trauma, but the series is also a tribute to Latta himself. It's filled with colourful memories of Latta and emotional interviews with those closest to him, including his wife Natalie Flynn and brother Craig. “It really allows the audience to get to know Nigel in a way that perhaps they haven't known in his previous documentaries,” Aiken says. 

It was an immense privilege for Aiken to make the docu-series, and after 14 seasons of dramatic MAFS dinner parties, a refreshing change, too. “It allowed me to really flex different muscles and lean into a very different style of filming,” he says, noting that while MAFS features many cameras and a crew of hundreds, making Lessons on Living involved a simpler set-up and a much smaller team. “You roll the sleeves up and you do whatever it takes, and so there's an intimacy to it which I haven't had before.” 

Lessons on Living was made by the same production company who worked with Latta for a decade on TV shows like The Curious Mind, You’ve Been Scammed and Mind Over Money. Working with a team who knew Latta well was important to Aiken, and he describes it as one of the best filming experiences he’s ever had. Importantly, it felt like Latta was always with them. “We talked about Nigel's stories. We'd have drinks at the end of the day and we'd reminisce. There were so many laughs,” he remembers. “We also followed through with Nigel's policy: no dickheads allowed.”

As Lessons on Living launches on New Zealand screens tonight, what does Aiken think Latta would have made of the series? Aiken admits he’s given it some thought, and reckons Latta would be “quietly happy” with the result. “It brings his book to life, and I think he'd be delighted that I shared some laughs with the people that he knew very well.”  He’s also pleased that the series will introduce Latta’s easy humour and relatable advice to a new audience of New Zealanders.

Mostly, Aiken hopes Lessons on Living is a fitting tribute to a “bloody good Kiwi bloke” who made psychology accessible to everyone. “I hope people reflect on Nigel and think about him and all his magnificence,” Aiken says, adding that regardless of whether Latta was handling a tarantula or diving into the ocean in one of his many television shows, he was a remarkable man. 

“He helped all sorts of people. I hope people really take a moment after watching it to remember him.”

Lessons on Living streams on Neon and screens on Sky Open on Wednesdays at 8.30pm.