Mara Lejins: The New Chaser on The Chase Australia

A familiar game show introduces a face nobody knows yet — and that face is smiling. Mara Lejins, the newest Chaser on The Chase Australia, arrived with a law degree, a trivia-night pedigree, and a nickname that promises trouble: The Smiling Assassin. The verified part of her story is thinner than the gossip suggests — but what’s on the record is clear, and it’s more interesting than the rumours.

Nickname: The Smiling Assassin (TV Blackbox (TV industry outlet)) · Show: The Chase Australia · Role: Chaser · Record: Lowest score in a Final Chase loss, per a fan Facebook post · Podcast Interview: Big Squid with Justin Hamilton, Nov 2025 (Castro (podcast platform))

Six facts, one pattern: the verifiable details about Mara Lejins are almost entirely about her television career — the personal columns stay blank.

Who is Mara from The Chase Australia?

The short answer: she’s the one who smiles while she wins. Mara Lejins joined The Chase Australia’s Chaser lineup in 2022, per an announcement from the show’s production company (ITV Studios Australia (the show’s producer)), and the nickname that instantly set her apart — The Smiling Assassin — came with her from day one.

What is Mara Lejins’s background?

• Her trivia origin story begins at The RUC, a Canberra club where she was a weekly regular (Region Canberra (Canberra regional news))
• She studied law and international relations at the Australian National University between 2014 and 2018 — and it was friends who watched her dominate those pub quizzes who applied for her to go on The Chase (Region Canberra (Canberra regional news))
• She graduated with honours, followed her parents — who met at ANU — into the same institution, lived at Bruce Hall for five years, and worked part-time as a security guard, all per one profile from Canberra Daily (local Canberra outlet)

The pattern is almost too neat: pub quiz regular → contestant → professional quizzer. The fan-run Chase Wiki dates her first television appearance as a contestant to 2017 (The Chase Wiki (fan-run database)) — a detail that matters because it means she knew the show from the contestant’s chair long before she sat in the Chaser’s.

Who is Brydon Coverdale?

• Brydon Coverdale is another Chaser on The Chase Australia, per the show’s entry on Wikipedia (crowd-sourced encyclopedia)
• Unlike Mara and Anne, he has no verified public profile: no age, no relationship status, no background details appear in the sources reviewed

Coverdale is, in other words, the ghost of the lineup — a name on the roster with no biography attached. The show doesn’t publish personal dossiers on its Chasers, so his silence in search results isn’t unusual; it’s just unusually complete.

What is Anne Hegerty’s real name?

• Anne Hegerty is her actual birth name — “The Governess” is her on-show persona (as documented in the Wikipedia biography cited below)
• She is a veteran of both The Chase UK and The Chase Australia, per the same source

There’s one plot twist worth knowing: Hegerty is so closely tied to the Governess character that fans assume it’s a stage name. It isn’t. The persona is a costume; Hegerty is the person underneath — and she’s unusually candid about what that person is like off camera.

The takeaway: the three Chasers in the current conversation sit at three very different points on the privacy spectrum — one veteran who’s spoken openly, one newcomer with a confirmed paper trail, and one Chaser who’s basically a ghost. That asymmetry is the real story of the lineup.

How old is Mara the new chaser?

This is one of the few personal details that’s actually on the record. According to Wikipedia (crowd-sourced encyclopedia), Mara Lejins was born on 11 April 1995 — which made her 27 at her August 2022 debut (TV Blackbox (TV industry outlet)). The show’s own production company, ITV Studios Australia, promoted that milestone, announcing her as the youngest Chaser on the series.

Is Mara Lejins married?

• Her own Instagram reel promoting the Channel 7 interview doesn’t touch on relationships (Instagram (Mara’s reel))
• The November 2025 Big Squid interview — the most recent long-form conversation — hasn’t produced a transcript that settles it either (Castro (podcast platform))

That silence isn’t proof she’s single. It’s proof that, so far, she hasn’t made her relationship status part of her public story — which, for someone on national television, is itself a choice.

Does Mara Lejins have children?

• No confirmed information about children appears in the sources reviewed (Now to Love (Australian lifestyle magazine))
• The joint interview Now to Love published with Mara and Anne Hegerty focuses on show secrets, not family life, to judge by its framing

The public record is a blank page here — and given how much of her career is already documented, the absence reads as intentional rather than accidental.

What is Mara Lejins’s family background?

• Her parents met at the Australian National University, and she later followed in their footsteps by studying there (Canberra Daily (local Canberra outlet))
• Beyond those ANU connections, her early family life hasn’t been opened up in the interviews reviewed

The ANU thread links her family to her formation, but the fuller story — where she grew up, who raised her, whether there are siblings — remains untold.

The pattern: Mara’s biography is a set of verified checkpoints — a birth date, a degree, a debut — with the connective tissue still missing. That makes “how old is she?” the one personal question the internet can actually answer correctly.

Which Chasers are married?

Among the Chasers named in the current coverage, exactly one has a verified answer — and it’s not the newcomer. According to Wikipedia (crowd-sourced encyclopedia), veteran Chaser Anne Hegerty is unmarried, has no children, and has spoken openly about being autistic. Her real name is Anne Hegerty; “The Governess” is the on-show persona, not a legal change.

Does Anne Hegerty have a partner?

• No spouse or public partner appears in her biography — the same Wikipedia entry cited above lists none
• The lifestyle coverage around her doesn’t surface a relationship either, per the same sources

Does Anne Hegerty have children?

• She has stated she has no children, according to the same Wikipedia biography
• That detail tends to appear in every profile because it’s one of the few personal facts she has made public

What is Anne Hegerty’s health problem?

• The accurate framing: Hegerty has been open about her autism diagnosis — it’s a neurotype she discusses, not a health crisis being hidden (per the Wikipedia entry cited above)
• The “health problem” search comes from her blunt on-screen manner, which viewers often read as a clue to something wrong

The distinction matters: “health problem” implies something concealed. Hegerty’s own framing, on the record, is that being autistic is part of how she operates — including the directness that makes her such an effective Chaser.

The pattern: the more a Chaser lets the public in, the more their personal life becomes part of the act. Hegerty’s status appears in every profile because she allows it. Lejins and Coverdale have kept the door closed — and in an era of oversharing, that silence is the more unusual choice.

Who is the richest chaser in The Chase?

The honest answer is unsatisfying: nobody can verify it. No net worth figure for Anne Hegerty, Brydon Coverdale, or Mara Lejins appears in the sources reviewed. The closest the coverage gets to money is prize winnings — 7NEWS’s story on why fewer women apply for The Chase devotes its detail to Mara’s Beat The Chasers haul, not her assets (7NEWS (Australian commercial news)).

How rich is Anne Hegerty?

• No published net worth figure appears in her biography or in the interviews reviewed (per the Wikipedia entry cited earlier)
• What she earns from The Chase and her other television work isn’t disclosed in any source reviewed, so “rich” here is unquantifiable

What is Mara Lejins’s net worth?

• The only money figures in the record are her on-air winnings: $20,000 banked as a contestant in 2017 (The Chase Wiki (fan-run database)) and $58,000 reported for the Beat The Chasers final in 2020, with some coverage noting $60,000 in the heats (7NEWS (Australian commercial news))
• Neither number is a net worth — and neither is a clue to one

The implication: “richest Chaser” is a question the sources can’t support. The only verifiable money story on the Australian side is Mara’s — and it’s about what she won on camera, not what she owns off it.

Is The Chase Australia filmed in front of a live audience?

The sources reviewed don’t confirm a live audience one way or the other. The Chase Australia is produced by ITV Studios Australia (ITV Studios Australia (the show’s producer)), and its announcement about Lejins focused on the new Chaser, not studio logistics. Neither the production notes nor the interviews address what happens in the room between takes.

Who are the current contestants on The Chase Australia?

• The show brings in different everyday contestants each episode, so there’s no standing roster to list (per the format coverage cited above)
• None of the interviews or social posts reviewed names a fixed lineup for current episodes

The catch: production transparency is where this topic runs out of road. The show’s own producer announces Chasers, not audience logistics — so if the live-audience detail matters to you, the only verified move is to watch an episode and look for yourself.

Mara Lejins vs. the other Chasers: how the lineup compares

Three Chasers, one pattern: the most famous one has the most verified personal details, while the two newer faces have kept their biographies deliberately quiet.

Why this matters: the lineup now spans three very different levels of privacy — a veteran who’s spoken openly about personal topics, a newcomer with a confirmed birth date and university background, and a Chaser who’s basically a ghost. When you compare them, the only column with real data is the one about the show itself; the rest is what each Chaser has chosen to reveal.

What the record says: quotes around “The Smiling Assassin”

“The Chase’s Anne and Mara dish all the secrets.”

Headline, Now to Love (Australian lifestyle magazine)

“The Smiling Assassin Mara Lejins – Career at The Chase Australia.”

Episode title, Big Squid with Justin Hamilton (via Acast)

Both documents do the same thing: they position Mara as someone who gives just enough access to keep audiences curious — an episode title, a joint magazine interview, a Channel 7 chat — while never handing over the personal file.

What this means: the record around Lejins is a collection of controlled reveals. Every piece of coverage pushes the same narrative — brilliant quizzer, cheerful competitor — and none of it opens the door further.

Where the Mara Lejins story actually stands

Here’s the part worth sitting with: a professional quizzer on national television has kept the parts of her life that aren’t on the buzzer almost entirely out of view. The gap between what fans want to know — age, marriage, money — and what the record contains isn’t a research failure; it’s a choice. (For readers profiling other Australian TV figures, this site’s pieces on Marc Fennell: Biography, Ethnicity, ADHD, Partner, and Career and Jasmine Stefanovic: Age, Children, Net Worth, and Career show how the same wall gets built in different ways.) For viewers trying to get ahead of the storyline, the consequence is simple: treat the fan-post record claim as rumour until the show confirms it, treat the verified career dates as fact, and treat the next long-form interview — not the comment section — as the only place the real biography is likely to arrive.

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