Earlier this month, Steven Soderbergh released a comprehensive list of every film, book, and television show he consumed in the year 2018—revealing that, in addition to ingesting the cerebral fare one may expect, the Oscar-winning filmmaker binge-watched over 50 episodes of Bravo’s reality series Below Deck. Soderbergh’s interest in the series, which concludes its sixth season Tuesday night, makes sense; like Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Below Deck is a voyeuristic glimpse into the human condition, sexuality, and neuroses. Except it’s set on a superyacht, with theme parties.
Each season takes place aboard a different vessel in a different breathtaking locale, as the crew caters to a revolving door of always wealthy, mostly drunk, occasionally nightmarish guests. The majority of the crew changes each season—a reflection of the transient “yachtie” lifestyle, viewers learn—but there are a few constants, starting with Lee Rosbach, the no-nonsense, silver-goateed ship captain who keeps his crew in line by barking salty one-liners. (“She let her mouth write a check her ass couldn’t cash,” Lee gravely observed, of a crew member’s recent temper tantrum). When he unwinds—only after the guests have left the boat—he does so by enjoying a late-afternoon glass of pinot noir in the hot tub: a bold choice that speaks to his confidence of character.
The other constant is Kate Chastain, chief stewardess since Season 2—the hard-driving head of guest experience and indoor staff; known for her polarizing management style; wry sense of humor; and masterful theme parties. She is a lightening-fast wit who, like the captain, calls it as she sees it and doesn’t suffer fools. (Their rapport is so easy that Chastain teases him by saying, “We’re the Regis and Kelly of the sea.”) She’s also the show’s audience avatar, hilariously analyzing each crew member and hellish guest, and immediately identifying their weaknesses with terrifying accuracy.
“I’m an amateur sociologist,” Chastain demurred, during a phone call last week. “I’m not judging someone—I’m just categorizing them. It’d be like bird-watching. Like, that’s a parrot because it has green feathers. That’s a flamingo, because it has pink feathers. That guy’s not a yachtie, because he’s got a Rastafarian beanie on.”
The show has always merged the theoretically highbrow (wealthy guests sipping champagne as they tour Tahiti) and the undeniably lowbrow (crew members hooking up in bunks; temper tantrums; passed-out-drunk guests). But this season has been the most compelling of them all—thanks to an especially entertaining crew and several jaw-dropping blunders (the perpetrators of which were ejected from the yacht mid-season).
The season also featured a frightening near-death experience which occurred when deckhand Ashton Pienaar was swept overboard after a line wrapped around his ankle and dragged him off the yacht into water. Had a Bravo cameraman not immediately thrown down his equipment to loosen the line, it would have severed Ashton’s foot and he would have bled to death—a grim outcome later explained by an uncharacteristically emotional Captain Lee. But because guests were on board, the crew had to go back to work as though nothing had happened.
“I’ve never seen anybody go man overboard in my yachting career,” said Chastain, whose job was to immediately divert the guests’ attention from the terrifying accident. “I don't think any of us realized exactly what had happened, since we were all on different parts of the boat at the time. So we just carried on with the charter. After the guests left, once we had time to really go over the incident, I think it was then that we realized how serious it was. . . . Unfortunately, Ashton’s accident was a strong reminder that we’re doing a real, dangerous job.”
And no matter how awful an accident may be, the crew cannot let paying guests know about it—lest they jeopardize their tips. “It’s our job to pretend that accidents don’t happen even when they do. There was a fire onboard Season 3,” Chastain explained, referencing chef Leon Walker’s kitchen grease fire. “That was pretty scary. But for the most part, professionals can mitigate the amount of accidents that happen.”
The adrenaline factor, Chastain thinks, “is why a lot of our viewers are actually men. I love it when a lady will tell me, ‘Below Deck is a show that my husband or brother will watch with me.’”
The show also gives audiences a glimpse into how the über-rich vacation (and how irritating some of them can be). Chastain estimated that a seven-day charter on the sixth season’s superyacht, Seanna, would cost guests nearly $500,000. (Guests who agree to be filmed for Below Deck are reportedly offered a 50 percent discount for a three-day charter, according to a producer on the series.) Chastain has dealt with new-money yacht guests, eager to try all sorts of (crew-exhausting) water toys and perks. She’s had to serve kids, dogs, millennials who barely glance up from their phones; sex workers; presumed mobsters; spoiled sorority sisters; celebrities; guests of celebrities who want to take advantage of their once-in-a-lifetime yachting experience by making nonstop requests. And she has had a favorite category of guest: “I love a very wealthy person who has done yachting before, because this isn’t new to them. This is just their floating home away from home. They’re not there to party, party, party; make the most of it. They just wanna relax.”
She’s also served movie stars, including, in her pre–Below Deck career, Leonardo DiCaprio. “He came to dinner on a boat that I worked on in St. Barts. He wasn’t a guest—he just walked on, sat at the table for one meal, and walked off. I think the owners of my boat had met him at the beach club that day and just decided to invite him for a quick dinner,” she said. “He’s so beautiful in person.”
The most ridiculous request she’s received in her yachting career also pre-dates Below Deck. “We were in the South of France on this partly cloudy day, and every time a cloud would pass in front of the sun, this wealthy yacht owner woman would ask the captain to pull the anchor and move the entire yacht not far, just to get back into the sun,” she said. “And then a cloud would move again and we’d have to move the yacht again. She probably spent $100,000 in fuel for her tan.”
Chastain, a Florida native, got into yachting after graduating from college with a degree in communications. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I thought if I did one year in yachting, that would buy me some time until I figured it out,” Chastain said, some 10 years later. (She wrote about her early yachting experiences in a memoir, Lucky Charming.) Now that she’s risen to “Chief Stew” rank, she gets a few extra perks. “At the end of a seven-day charter, the chief usually gets a little thank-you present from guests. I got a very expensive Montblanc pen with a pearl on the end of it, and I worked for one woman who had an incredible closet she was tired of,” she said—revealing that she ended up with bags of the woman’s Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choo shoes, as well as Gucci dresses.
Each season of Below Deck is filmed over the course of six or seven weeks. This season featured Chastain’s favorite crew she’s ever worked with. “They were all fun personalities and, honestly, I would’ve done another four weeks with that crew at that point. Usually I’m ready to run off the boat at the end of the season,” she said.
But Chastain has no idea which cast members will return for future seasons—she doesn’t know until she arrives on deck. If she had to hand-pick three cast members from the current season to return for the next Below Deck charter, though, they would be Ashton, Rhylee, and Laura—the last of whom showed up more than halfway through the season. “Josiah is amazing and super helpful,” she explained of her B.F.F. onboard, “but I feel like Laura and I only got to enjoy working together for such a short amount of time, ’cause she came late season. I think Rhylee started on a bad foot with Chandler, so I think she deserves another chance to have a season.”
When Chastain first appeared on Below Deck, she was hypercritical as she watched each episode, nit-picking superfluous details like her hairstyle. But five seasons into her run on the show, she has only one moment she regrets—and it airs in Tuesday’s finale. “At the end of the final episode, we are having a great time, all so happy, and I start dancing. I do a really dorky move where I do finger guns with my hands, and it’s just so cringey. I was feeling myself, and I thought I looked way cooler than it did.”
I asked whether Chastain knows that Steven Soderbergh watches Below Deck. “No, but that’s amazing,” she said, before revealing that Bravo host (and Chastain’s dream charter primary) Andy Cohen recently alerted her of another unlikely audience member: Brian Williams. Apparently, serious journalists and filmmakers alike appreciate the escape Below Deck provides. “My mom and I have always thought he was the cutest anchor, so I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, my mom’s going to be so thrilled.”
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