‘Eye-opening’: The Block’s Leonie on the nerves around taking on the foreman job

Exclusive: For the third time ever in The Block’s history there’s a new foreman on site, but this time it’s a first for the show, with a woman named Leonie taking on the top job. 

With Foreman Dan headed off on paternity leave with his wife Dani, the role opened up and when speaking to nine.com.au Leonie admitted she nearly dropped her phone when she got the call. 

“I nearly dropped the phone when they told me,” she explained. 

“It’s something that I envisioned, but it was a complete shock that it actually happened.” 

For Leonie, it was the “best feeling ever”. 

The new foreperson explained she got her builders license at the back end of 2025. 

“I’ve been working in construction for over 10 years,” she said. 

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“I was kind of born on construction sites, my parents are builders, so I’m very familiar with the construction industry.” 

But for Leonie – who is the first to admit she’s a massive ‘Blockhead’ – she always thought it would be so cool to join the show as an offsider to Foreman Dan, like he was with Foreman Keith. 

So, once she got her builders license she cold called, put herself out there and got in touch with production and left it until she got that call up before Season 22. 

“The very first day was such a whirlwind,” she said. 

“Obviously, before that I had been to site a few times and met people, we had planned a handover and it was organised that I was going to shadow Dan for a few days.” 

Leonie explained she was meant to start on a Monday, but the Friday afternoon before she got a call and was told there was going to be no shadowing Dan anymore because Dani was in labour and he wouldn’t be coming back. 

“They said, ‘We’re just gonna bring you on because Dan’s already at the hospital, so yeah… you’re going to start on Monday,’” she recalled. 

“I was like, let’s do this because essentially the baton had been handed to me.” 

For Leonie it was one thing to have an understanding of the show as a viewer, to then be thrown into being on site. 

“I knew it was going to be eye-opening, and I knew that there would be a lot of expectation, [because] I really had massive shoes to fill in Dan,” she said. 

“So I had my own internal pressure and it was a bit of a baptism of fire.” 

But it quickly disappeared once she actually got into it. 

“By day two or three, I felt like I had been there for like, weeks because all you’re doing it living and breathing The Block, so I was able to get my head around it pretty quickly.” 

Despite a long history in working on construction sites, Leonie admitted that there were some nerves about rocking up in Mount Eliza and taking on the role as a woman. 

“I mean, I think anyone walking onto a new site would feel that,” she said. 

“But you’re right, there’s an aspect of ‘Oh God, I’m gonna be one of the very few women on the construction side of things.’

“I was like, OK, I'm gonna go in and put my best foot forward and prove that I have value to add here. 

“I was very much really trying to go in with that sort of mentality of like, ‘I'm here, I'm gonna throw everything at this’.”

For Leonie, she believes that when other people can see that someone is really trying hard and putting in a lot of effort, that’s when you will garner respect from other people. 

While there has been some change within the industry with more women going into construction roles, it’s still not something that’s overly common. 

But for Leonie, The Block site and the Nine and Six team were great to work with and she said “I never felt different”. 

“It was incredibly inclusive and I felt respected from the get-go.”