Under the bridge Executive producer Mark Cronin recalled that the Season 1 crew essentially quit following a drug quit during the first episode. However, Season 1 stew Sam Orme remembers the instance very differently.
Robe-clad photographer Johnny Eyelash and his friends were fired when Kate Held’s stew found what appeared to be cocaine in one of the guest cabins. Cronin told Showbiz Cheat Sheet that after Eyelash was kicked off the boat, the yacht’s crew became suspicious of the production.
“The whole cast quit,” he said. “They were all basically like, ‘That’s it, we’re not doing the show. If you put our licenses at risk by putting drugs on this boat, we quit.
Sam Orme thought the “Below Deck” crew just took a vacation
Orme didn’t remember quitting. She was in the laundry room when Held found what appeared to be drugs. “I was a bit removed from everything that was going on,” she recalls on Another podcast under the bridge. “I don’t know where I was, probably in the laundry room. And Kat was cleaning all the heads and found it. So, you know, I didn’t really know what was going on until after the fact. And someone said, oh, the guests leave, or the guests get kicked out.
But as far as everyone quitting because they didn’t trust the production or thought the production planted the drugs, Orme said nothing like that happened. “To my knowledge, there have been no drug plantations,” she said in response to Cronin’s claim. “It was actually a welcome break because we didn’t have to serve people the following week. We just have a downtime. So I was playing in the ocean.
Mark Cronin feared he had a Season 1 ‘Below Deck’ disaster on his hands
Cronin recalled that the crew of the yacht took the drug case very seriously and that it was the first time he had filmed Under the bridge the crew didn’t really trust the production.
“A lot of these people didn’t even have TVs, like they didn’t even know what reality TV really was,” he said. “They are just boaters, really. Yachting is very important to them and retain their yachting certifications and licenses. And it was no joke. So they were looking at us like, ‘Well, what is it? Are you preparing us? Are these guests coming here to make life difficult for us on purpose? And how far are you kidding us? »
“I would always say that we mean business to you,” he recounted, telling the crew. “We are not joking with you. They are charter guests. They pay. If their check has cleared the bank, they come to the show. I do nothing with them. I don’t prepare them or anything.
“And they’d be like, ‘Yeah okay. But I bet that’s a setup,'” Cronin said. “And then when Johnny Eyelash came along, everything was fine, everything was fine until they found the dope. And then the cast said, ‘Oh, this is a set-up, and these guys don’t know how serious what they just did to us is. That is to say us. That is, the TV show.
Mark Cronin had to convince the ‘Below Deck’ cast that no one planted drugs on the boat
Cronin claimed he had to convince the actors that they weren’t putting them up. “I was supposed to meet Captain Lee [Rosbach] and say, “Well, before I can get into the whole cast drop issue, we have to get rid of these guys,” he recalled. “So Lee says, ‘That’s right, we’re getting rid of these guys. The charter is complete. We return to the wharf. So we return to the wharf.
“Lee kicks them off the boat, then I turn off all the cameras, and we all had to go into the main living room of the boat,” he said. “And I had to sit everybody down and say, ‘We didn’t put drugs on that boat.’ These guys, unbeknownst to us, brought something on this boat that’s uncool. I get it. And it’s a disaster. And I didn’t want to end this charter sooner. I didn’t want that. I didn’t know. It’s not good for me if we could stop in the first episode either.