Elizabeth Frankini knew sleeping in a guest cabin was off-limits. She'd worked as a stewardess on luxury yachts for five years. Even when guests weren't on board, the crew kept to their cramped quarters and bunk beds unless their manager gave them explicit permission otherwise.
But this yacht was different.
It was spring 2020, and Frankini was a few weeks into filming "Below Deck," the wildly popular Bravo show that chronicles the lives of the young (and attractive) crew who work on superyachts. When Frankini returned to the boat after a night of drinking with her crewmates, she got a text from her castmate James Hough, with whom she was romantically involved.
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Hough asked Frankini to meet him in one of the 180-foot vessel's guest cabins, which were empty until new charter guests arrived. Frankini was nervous. But off camera, she said, producers urged the pair to sleep there.
About a week later, Frankini was fired. The boat's chief stewardess, Francesca Rubi, told her sleeping in the guest cabin without permission had been "the final straw." Hough was allowed to keep his job.
Frankini was shocked to be fired for something producers encouraged her to do. "That gave me a very bad taste in my mouth about Bravo, about production, about everything," she told Business Insider.
"Below Deck," which premiered in 2013, is one of Bravo's top-rated reality series, with some seasons even surpassing "The Real Housewives" franchise. As many as 1.5 million viewers tune in weekly to watch guests demand gumballs be delivered via helicopter or see cast members hooking up in the hot tub on their nights off. The show, which has four spinoffs including "Below Deck Mediterranean" and "Below Deck Down Under," has run for 26 seasons and featured nearly 200 cast members. But unlike the Real Housewives, who are filmed at lavish dinner parties and charity galas, the "Below Deck" cast actually needs to know how to work on a boat. During the six weeks they're confined to a yacht, they perform their very real, very demanding jobs — from cleaning bathrooms and docking the boats to keeping anchor watch overnight to avoid collisions — while being filmed 24/7.
They also rake in cash for Bravo. While cast members on other top Bravo shows are compensated handsomely — the stars of "Southern Charm" make a reported $25,000 an episode and some Real Housewives earn more than $1 million a season — "Below Deck" stars are only paid what they would make on a regular yachting job: typically between $5,000 and $6,000 a month, depending on their position (the captain earns nearly triple). Multiple cast members told BI that such a massive pay discrepancy is unfair.
"We're on TV, but technically we're the help," said Ashley Marti, a stewardess on the third season of "Below Deck Sailing Yacht." "We don't get the same treatment."
After filming, a Real Housewife can end the season and continue along her charity-gala circuit. But multiple "Below Deck" cast members said appearing on the franchise made it more difficult to get hired for yachting jobs off camera. In addition to the meager pay, some told BI they were mistreated on the show. Gabriela Barragán, who appeared on season three of "Below Deck Sailing Yacht," said a producer encouraged her to drink alcohol on camera even though they knew she struggled with substance abuse. Barragán said she was subjected to a barrage of microaggressions while filming and was then asked to leave the show. Only five other Black women have been cast on "Below Deck," two of whom were fired and another unofficially demoted.
When asked about former crew members' claims, a Bravo spokesperson told BI that "we take allegations of misconduct on our shows seriously and review all claims that are brought to our attention." They added that Bravo recently enhanced its production policies, including "stricter guidelines on alcohol consumption and direction on when to intervene to maintain safety of cast and crew, increased psychological support, enhanced workplace trainings, and a requirement to provide cast and crew with a direct line to NBCUniversal to raise concerns."
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But for some, it's too little, too late. Bravo is "making all of this money, and I've lost a ton by being on their show," said Barragán, who left her season two weeks early. "It's infuriating and sad."
Working on a superyacht is a grueling whirlwind of a job. The crew wake up at the crack of dawn, dress in matching uniforms, and get to work catering to the guests' every whim. The deckhands ensure the yacht's exterior is pristine at all times and set up Jet Skis and inflatable water slides. The stewardesses take care of everything from cleaning guest cabins and serving elaborate 10-course tasting menus to organizing beach picnics and unicorn-themed parties.
For "Below Deck" yachties, there's also all the work that comes with being on TV: filming confessional interviews, wearing microphones around the clock, and navigating extra-tight timelines. While a typical yacht charter lasts at least a week, "Below Deck" stars are squeezing up to nine two- or three-day charters into a six-week season. Every few days, the crew has to turn around the boat and learn new names, new food preferences, and new outlandish requests from guests who want the full charter experience in 48 hours.
"It's like real yachting on steroids," Aesha Scott, a chief stew who has appeared on four seasons, said.
Producing a season of "Below Deck" is an intricate process. Bravo works with third-party production companies — including 51 Minds Entertainment and Mountain View Productions — that pay to charter a luxury yacht for each six-week season, plus the two weeks needed to rig the yachts with cameras and microphones. Most of the yachts on "Below Deck" cost between $150,000 and $350,000 a week to charter, so producers can easily shell out more than $1 million on the vessel alone.
Casting producers find guests willing to be filmed on vacation in exchange for about a 50% discount, "Below Deck" creator Mark Cronin said in a 2016 Reddit AMA. The cost to charter the lavish 197-foot St. David yacht from seasons 10 and 11, for example, starts at $325,000 a week. For a three-day charter on "Below Deck," guests would pay about $70,000. Courtland Cox, an executive producer, said most of the guests on the show have chartered yachts before. For producers, the more demanding the guest, the better.
Because the shows are filmed all over the world (past locations include the Bahamas, Italy, and Tahiti), production staff must arrive weeks early to set up offices in local hotels, scout bars and restaurants for crew nights out, and plan activities for charter guests.
Yachties either apply to be on the show or are recruited on social media. Each potential cast member goes through several rounds of interviews as well as a psychological evaluation. To get cast, you must have some prior yachting experience, be at least 21, and have all the required yachting licenses and certifications. Most importantly, you need to be good on camera.
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"They warn us in the beginning: 'You only have six weeks. This is your one chance. Don't be boring. Make the most of it,'" Marti said.
The payout from being on the show itself is surprisingly small, especially compared to other Bravo shows. Instead of raking in tens of thousands, crew members are paid only the equivalent of their regular yachting salaries by the production company. On boats the size of those typically seen on the show, deckhands and second and third stews typically make about $5,000 a month. The chief stew or chef makes about $6,000. Captains earn upward of $16,000.
They warn us in the beginning: 'You only have six weeks. Don't be boring.' Ashley MartiYachties also get cash tips, usually between 15% and 20% of the charter fee. And while "Below Deck" guests get a discounted rate, they're expected to tip based on the full fee.
One former chief stew, Kate Chastain, said in 2019 that crew members consider a good tip to be between $2,000 and $2,500 per two- or three-day charter and that anything under $1,000 would be "depressing." On a busy vessel, yachties can double their monthly salary with tips — and keep all the cash. But on "Below Deck," producers collect the tips and wire the funds to crew members' bank accounts. For many, this means their tips are taxable.
Once cast members are on board, they jump right into working 18-hour days while trying to navigate around camera operators, sound mixers, and other production staff roaming the boat. Cameras are mounted everywhere except the bathrooms. And if more than one person goes into the bathroom, filming there is fair game, too. The cameras can zoom in on the cast's cellphone screens to read their text messages, and the crew must wear microphones around the clock, only taking them off to sleep.
"You don't really get privacy," Hayley De Sola Pinto, a stew on "Below Deck" season 10, said. "I used to go to the toilet and just hang out by myself for five minutes and have my moment, then get back to reality. Just sit there in complete silence."
Some cast members, like De Sola Pinto, quickly got used to the cameras. After a while, "people following you around just seems to be a normal day," she said. But Jessica Albert, a stew from season nine, said she quit the show after she lost 15 pounds in less than three weeks. "My anxiety was just through the roof," she said.
At the start of each filming day, producers brief the camera operators on various "storylines" to keep an eye on. The producers monitor the action from the control room, a production hub set up in a spare cabin. Sometimes they pull aside cast members to ask them to repeat a conversation or to suggest they ask a coworker about their romantic relationship with another crew member.
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"If there's a fight going on, they'll tell someone to go to that area or see what happens," Frankini said. "Always stirring the pot."
Of course, "stirring the pot" is to be expected on reality TV. But some said producers' meddling crossed a line.
Producers relentlessly pushed on-board romances, multiple cast members said. Robert Phillips, a deckhand from season eight of "Below Deck," told BI that producers repeatedly urged him to take his female coworkers on on-camera dates; he refused.
Frankini said producers were hyper-focused on her romance with Hough. One executive producer pressed her to discuss it on camera, despite Frankini's fears of seeming unprofessional. Later, the chief stew reprimanded Frankini for being overly focused on her romantic life and cited that as a reason for her firing.
"Most of the things that made me look super bad, I was encouraged to do," Frankini said, adding that it was difficult to see the line between doing her job and making good TV. "I was very torn between what's real and what's not," she said. "It's an easy place to be manipulated from."
In a Reddit AMA after Frankini's season aired in 2020, her season eight crewmate Phillips blasted production for how they handled the guest-cabin incident. "Hearing Liz sob while whispering, 'But production told me I could,' absolutely broke me," he wrote. "Knowing anyone had a willing hand in that was disgusting."
Producers often acted buddy-buddy with the cast, but they could also be cutthroat, cast members said. One producer on "Sailing Yacht" earned the nickname "M&M" — master manipulator — Barragán said.
Barragán recalled one confessional interview with "M&M." Barragán had not been getting along with her fellow stew Ashley Marti. "M&M," who knew Barragán was bisexual, asked if the tension between the two was because Barragán was attracted to her colleague. Barragán was shocked. "Because me and Ashley were having professional issues, I secretly wanted to bang her?" Barragán said. "Do you know how damaging that insinuation is?"
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Marti also took issue with "M&M." In a follow-up confessional interview filmed in Los Angeles months after her season ended, Marti cried while talking about her cousin, who had died. Seeing her tears, "M&M" told her to change the topic and start talking about one of her cast mates, the deckhand Tom Pearson. "M&M" said, "'Wait, say this, but keep crying,'" Marti recalled. "We're not robots, we are real people with real emotions. Some things are over the line no matter what."
Producers often encouraged the cast to drink alcohol, four cast members said. At the end of each charter, crew members went out drinking to celebrate. The next morning, they filmed their confessional interviews when they were often hungover — or, in some cases, still tipsy, people said. Alcohol was often on hand, even though some confessionals started as early as 8 a.m.
Alcohol is ubiquitous on most reality shows, and "Below Deck" is no exception. "They don't force us to drink, but if you wanted to go to bed or you were away from the group for too long on crew nights they'd be like, 'Go back to the party. You can't go to bed yet,'" Marti said.
Barragán said "M&M" pressured her to drink on multiple occasions, despite Barragán telling producers she struggled with substance abuse. "There were times when I was like, 'I'm not gonna drink tonight. Alcohol's not my friend,'" Barragán said. "M&M" would "come on set and talk me out of not drinking. 'Come on, you can have a couple. Just pace yourself.' I was like, 'I cannot pace myself. That's the problem.'"
Excessive alcohol consumption led to some dangerous situations. On season seven, one cast member, Ashton Pienaar, who appeared to be drunk, punched the window of a van full of crew members while arguing with the chief stew, Kate Chastain. Tanner Sterback, another cast member who was in the van, said Pienaar "almost put a hole through the window" and seemed like he might punch Chastain in the face.
I was very torn between what's real and what's not. It's an easy place to be manipulated from. Elizabeth FrankiniOn "Sailing Yacht" season four, Lucy Edmunds hurt her back when she fell headfirst off her top bunk after a night out. "I have a permanent scar," Edmunds said. "I can't blame anything but myself. I was the one that was drunk."
In August, producers on "Down Under" were forced to intervene on camera when Luke Jones, who had been drinking, stripped naked and climbed into fellow crew member Margot Sisson's bed while she was asleep. Producers ordered Jones to leave Sisson's cabin, and Aesha Scott, the chief stew, alerted Captain Jason Chambers, who kicked Jones off the boat that night and fired him the next morning. The next day, Chambers fired another crew member, Laura Bileskalne, for defending Jones's behavior and for her repeated sexual advances toward another crew member who had clearly stated he wasn't interested in Bileskalne.
"Once you're drunk enough, you forget that [the cameras] are there," Marti said. "And that's where you do your dumbest things."
"Below Deck" producers look for young, good-looking yachties when casting for each new season — but diversity doesn't seem to be a priority. In 10 years, "Below Deck" has only cast a handful of people of color. The yachting industry as a whole is notoriously white, so much so that statistics on racial diversity in the industry simply don't exist.
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The first nonwhite chief stew, Tumi Mhlongo, appeared this year, in the eighth season of "Below Deck Mediterranean"; she's one of only six Black women to ever be cast on the show. Of those six, three were fired or asked to leave, and one second stew was unofficially demoted to laundry duty.
Several Black cast members have criticized Bravo and producers for how they were treated. Barragán, who is Black and Latina, said women of color are often framed negatively on the show: "She's the villain, she's aggressive, and she ends up getting fired and quitting."
Barragán said she experienced an onslaught of racist comments and microaggressions on the third season of "Sailing Yacht." One crew member said Barragán's hair looked like "pubes" and told her she was "aggressive" — a common microaggression leveled at Black women. Another crew member pointed to a Black person on the street and said, "Look, Gaby, your brother," Barragán said. A third crew member, during a talent show for the guests, told a joke about slaves that ultimately didn't air, she recalled.
"It was coming from all different directions in the most subtle ways that only a person of color can really pick up on," Barragán said, adding that these microaggressions made it difficult for her to focus on her job.
When Barragán reacted, she said producers often pulled her to the side and told her to calm down instead of reprimanding the person who'd made the racist comment.
On season 10 of "Below Deck," Alissa Humber was fired for what Captain Sandy Yawn called "insubordination" and an "intolerable" lack of respect. (Yawn said she overheard Humber saying the captain favored the deck crew over the interior crew. And Humber once called Yawn "Sandy" instead of "Captain Sandy" before quickly correcting herself, which Yawn believed was intentional.) When the show aired, Humber wrote on Instagram that she would likely skip the televised cast reunion because she "became extremely unhealthy mentally during and following the show." She reposted a comment that said, "I'm tired of people saying race isn't a factor on these shows." The reunion was later canceled.
Lexi Wilson was fired as a stewardess from season six of "Below Deck Mediterranean," with Yawn calling Wilson's frequent arguments with the yacht's chef "disturbing." When the episode of Wilson's firing aired in September 2021, Wilson blasted "Below Deck" producers on Instagram, saying it had been "completely edited down." She called out one executive producer by name, writing, "And the nerve of you to message me talking about how you treated me fairly when you allowed this to happen." Wilson deleted the post and her Instagram account shortly thereafter.
On season nine of "Below Deck," Rayna Lindsey had her own experience with racial intolerance. On a crew night out, Lindsey, who is Black, jokingly greeted a fellow cast member using the N-word. Lindsey's white coworker, Heather Chase, who was walking behind her from the bathroom back to the bar, repeated the remark.
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Later that night on the boat, Lindsey told Chase she couldn't say the N-word because she was white. Chase initially denied using the word but later apologized.
In a confessional interview afterward, Lindsey said it was painful to be expected to work with people who thought using the slur was OK. "It hurts my heart," she said. "It hurts everything in me."
After the episode aired in December 2021, Lindsey blasted Bravo and "Below Deck" producers on Instagram, saying she was "very disappointed" in the way Bravo handled the situation and "kept rewarding" Chase throughout filming. She added that producers did not support her in the situation and made her "look crazy" all season. "I need to help and warn other minorities to not come on the show," she wrote. BI was unable to reach Lindsey or Chase for comment.
Barragán eventually left the show at the recommendation of the producers. About four weeks into filming, the executive producer Courtland Cox knocked on her cabin door one day and said producers were concerned for her, she recalled. She had been drinking heavily, getting into arguments with coworkers, and crying often throughout filming. "He was like, 'We think collectively that you're under duress. We think you should leave,'" Barragán said.
Barragán said Cox told her she'd probably be fired soon and that she might be able to return to the show in a future season if she quit instead. "My mind was scrambled," she said. "I didn't know who to trust, what to think." She agreed to leave and told the captain on camera that she'd decided to do so for her mental well-being.
She believes the Bravo show "reflects the reality of the industry." People of color, said Barragán, "have no room to make mistakes."
One might think that "Below Deck" cast members endure all this in exchange for fame and fortune — the Faustian bargain of reality TV. It's true that some cast members have become minor celebrities, landing brand and book deals, starring in spinoffs, and being swooned over at BravoCon. De Sola Pinto, who is pursuing acting, recently landed a Playboy partnership. "'Below Deck' helped me in a hell of a lot of ways," she said. "It's given me exposure."
But for some people, the exposure doesn't make up for the minimal pay. A person close to Bravo said returning cast members can get raises of "up to 20%." But some of the cast members who've tried to negotiate higher salaries said they've had varying degrees of success. Rachel Hargrove, a chef on seasons eight, nine, and 10 of "Below Deck," said the pay discrepancy between "Below Deck" and other Bravo shows was still shockingly large. She was furious when a "Southern Charm" cast member told her he was making $25,000 an episode. "That's when I was like, are you fucking kidding me?" Hargrove said. "We're the top-rated show, and they're just fucking people left and right."
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Several "Below Deck" cast members said crew deserve higher salaries, as well as TV appearance fees and residuals (payments for airings after a show's initial release). Reality-TV stars don't get residuals because such payments are negotiated by unions, and there's no union representing reality-TV cast and crew.
Over the past year, the topic of how reality stars are treated has gotten as juicy as any of their storylines. This summer, "Real Housewives" star Bethenny Frankel started calling for reality stars to unionize, and a team of attorneys sent a letter to NBCUniversal, Bravo's parent company, accusing the network of "grotesque and depraved mistreatment" of reality-TV cast and crew.
In October, Vanity Fair published an article in which several prominent Housewives, including Frankel, accused Bravo and its production company partners of racist language and behavior, encouraging substance abuse, and "breaking them down for storylines." Two former "Love Is Blind" cast members started the UCAN Foundation, which advocates for better treatment of reality stars, after they and several other former contestants told BI that they were denied sufficient water and sleep and suffered panic attacks while filming the Netflix dating show.
The spotlight fell on "Below Deck" in August, when an article published in "Rolling Stone" accused producers of covering up allegations of sexual misconduct against the cast member Gary King while filming "Sailing Yacht" in 2022. In the article, Samantha Suarez, a makeup artist, said King sexually assaulted her. When she reported the assault, she said producers asked her not to discuss it and didn't rehire her. Two other production staffers said they'd seen King behave inappropriately with other cast and production crew with seemingly no consequences. King declined to comment for the article but later appeared to indirectly deny the allegations on Instagram.
Spokespeople for Bravo and the production company 51 Minds Entertainment said at the time that Suarez's concerns had been investigated and appropriate action taken. King was removed from the lineup for this November's BravoCon in Las Vegas, but Bravo has not announced whether he'll appear in "Sailing Yacht" season five, which is expected to air next year. 51 Minds told BI the company is "is committed to providing an environment where every member of the casts and crews on our productions feels safe and respected" and provides "mandatory anti-harassment and unconscious bias training at the outset of each new season for every series we produce."
As the reality-TV industry struggles with whether and how to hold itself accountable, some former "Below Deck" cast members said they're still reeling from their appearances on the show. Phillips, the deckhand from season eight, said he refuses to watch "Below Deck" because of how he saw producers treat people. "The 'Below Deck' producers certainly weren't using the standards of behavior and ethics I would call moral," he said. "In fact, they fell far short of that."
Barragán believes joining the cast cost her job opportunities on other yachts. "I get to the final round of interviews, and they do a Google search and say never mind," she said.
In the yachting industry, "Below Deck" is "pretty much viewed as a joke," Albert said. "A lot of yacht owners don't want attention. They just want to live their life of luxury. They also don't want to have a bunch of crazy crewmates running around naked and getting wasted." She added, "The show doesn't make people look good at their jobs."
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Three recent cast members swore off alcohol after going on the show. Sisson from "Down Under" said on Instagram that she didn't drink for a year after her season wrapped and that being on "Below Deck" was "undoubtedly the hardest thing I've ever done." Ashton Pienaar said publicly that watching himself on "Below Deck" made him decide to get sober, and Rayna Lindsey said she quit drinking liquor a month after her season began airing.
After Barragán's season aired in 2022, she said she hit "rock bottom" with her alcohol use and was afraid for her life. Over a year later, she's doing much better. But she still feels like her ordeal was for nothing.
"I was so naive and so manipulated and gaslighted and basically emotionally abused, only to be thrown out like yesterday's newspaper," she said, adding, "It's just such a mindfuck."
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