10 Scandals That Rocked the Below Deck Franchise. Sexual Misconduct on Camera, a Programmed Coup Against a Fan Favourite, a Lawsuit Going to Federal Court — and the Network That Kept Filming Anyway.
Twenty-plus seasons. Five spin-offs. One franchise that has produced more genuine scandal than most scripted dramas. These are the ten moments the Below Deck universe would really rather you'd moved on from.
Hundreds of crew members. Open bars. No personal space. Cameras rolling twenty-four hours a day. The Below Deck franchise was always going to produce scandals — that was the premise, more or less. What nobody quite anticipated was how serious some of them would get. Sexual misconduct that ended up in federal court. A mid-broadcast racism firing. A betrayal so meticulously timed it had fans using the word "coup" for years. And a deckhand who slept with a married charter guest while the husband was literally on the same yacht and then announced it to his coworkers over drinks. Below Deck has done it all. In receipts-first order, here are the ten that genuinely cannot be scrolled past.
SCANDAL #1. Luke Jones Climbs Into Margot Sisson's Bunk — Naked, Uninvited, and Apparently Confused About What "No" Means.
Luke Jones — Below Deck Down Under S2
Below Deck Down Under, Season 2. Let's start with the one that no amount of reunion spin can soften. Bosun Luke Jones drunkenly climbed into stew Margot Sisson's bunk while she was asleep — naked, without consent, and with the self-awareness of a golden retriever who just knocked over the Christmas tree. The cameras caught enough. Captain Jason Chambers fired him on the spot. Good.
But then — because apparently one firing wasn't enough drama — Luke's colleague Laura Bileskalne decided the correct response to her crewmate's assault was to publicly defend the man who committed it. She told anyone who would listen that Margot "wasn't unconscious" and that Luke had simply gone in "to talk." Laura was fired shortly after for her own separate misconduct involving unwanted advances toward another crew member. A fitting end to a truly spectacular display of missing the point entirely.
Two firings. One incident. Zero self-awareness from the people who weren't the victim. Chief stew Aesha Scott — herself a sexual assault survivor — said her instincts had been firing all night. She was right. The only person on that boat who handled any of this with grace was Margot herself.
SCANDAL #2. Gary King: A Rolling Stone Exposé, a Federal Lawsuit, and a Network That Kept Filming Him Anyway.
Below Deck Sailing Yacht, Ongoing. Gary King spent years on Sailing Yacht being exactly the kind of guy you'd cross the street to avoid — charming on camera, constitutionally incapable of respecting a boundary. Fans made excuses. The network made edits. And then Rolling Stone published an exposé featuring multiple former employees speaking anonymously about alleged sexual harassment that occurred in front of producers, after verbal warnings had already been issued.
"It was insane," one source told the magazine. "There were multiple incidents in front of multiple producers after this person had been given verbal warnings multiple times. I had to promote and make this guy who just assaulted someone look awesome." That last sentence should haunt everyone in that production office.
Bravo's response? Keep him. Film another season. Issue a statement. Gary appeared in Sailing Yacht Season 5 — filmed after the allegations were already public. As of 2026, a federal judge has denied a motion to push the lawsuit into private arbitration. It's going to court. Bravo and NBCUniversal are named defendants alongside Gary.
This stopped being about Gary a long time ago. The real question is what the network knew, when they knew it, and why they kept rolling the cameras. A federal court is going to ask exactly the same thing. We will be watching every filing.
SCANDAL #3. Peter Hunziker Posts a Racist Meme While His Season Is Actively Airing. Bravo Fires Him in Real Time.
Peter Hunziker — Below Deck Med S5
Below Deck Mediterranean, Season 5. Most people wait until after their season has aired to torpedo their own career. Peter Hunziker, deckhand on Below Deck Med Season 5, decided to do it mid-broadcast. While his face was literally on television every Monday night, he posted a deeply offensive meme featuring a Black woman in shackles and apparently concluded that this would go unnoticed.
It did not go unnoticed. Bravo fired him within hours: "Peter Hunziker of Below Deck Mediterranean has been terminated for his racist post. Bravo and 51 Minds are editing the show to minimize his appearance for subsequent episodes." The edit was awkward — you cannot digitally erase a deckhand who has already appeared in five episodes — but they tried their best.
The audacity of doing this while the season is literally airing. No drawn-out investigation, no "we take these matters seriously" holding pattern. Just a statement and a lot of very uncomfortable re-editing. Fastest firing in franchise history, and possibly the most deserved.
SCANDAL #4. Malia White Reports Hannah Ferrier's Valium — the Week Hannah Refused to Give Up Her Cabin. A Programmed Coup.
Below Deck Mediterranean, Season 5. Season 5 already had one scandal. It wasn't done. Let's go through what actually happened, because the official version conveniently leaves out the most interesting parts.
Malia White shared a cabin with chief stew Hannah Ferrier all season. Hannah — who suffered from anxiety — had been taking Valium the entire time. Malia knew. She had seen the wrappers in their shared bin for weeks. At some point during the season, Hannah asked Malia for a pill. Malia gave it to her. So the idea that this was a sudden discovery of an unexpected safety risk is — how to put this delicately — creative storytelling.
Then Malia's boyfriend Tom joined the boat as replacement chef. Malia wanted the cabin. Hannah said no — she had no interest in bunking with Bugsy Drake, with whom she had history. Hannah held her ground. The same week, Malia photographed Hannah's Valium, a CBD vape pen, and a lighter — arranged, according to multiple fan accounts, with the kind of precision that suggests someone took their time composing the shot — and sent the image directly to Captain Sandy. Hannah was fired on the spot. Malia got the cabin.
Malia insists the cabin dispute had nothing to do with it. "I already had my bunk at that point," she told Andy Cohen on WWHL. Which — sure. But she also had the Valium information for weeks, gave Hannah a pill herself, and chose to report it the exact same week Hannah refused to move rooms. The timeline is what it is. Maritime law is real and the firing may have been technically correct. The timing was a choice.
This was a coup. A coordinated, meticulously timed, perfectly photographed coup. Hannah never came back. She runs her own yacht training academy in Australia and appears considerably happier. Malia never shook the snitch label. Some receipts don't expire — and this one has aged like fine wine for Team Hannah.
SCANDAL #5. Ashton Pienaar Gets Drunk, Gets Aggressive, and Drives Kate Chastain Out of the Franchise Entirely.
Ashton Pienaar — Below Deck S7
Below Deck, Season 7. By the end of Season 7, Kate Chastain — one of the most beloved chief stews in Below Deck history — had made her decision. She was done. The final straw wasn't a single incident; it was an entire season of misogynistic behaviour from bosun Ashton Pienaar that climaxed on a crew night out when he got drunk, got into a van with Kate, punched the interior, and turned on her in a way that made the entire viewing audience deeply uncomfortable.
The cameras were there. Bravo aired it. Ashton was not fired. Kate left. The franchise lost one of its sharpest, funniest, most watchable personalities because the environment had become genuinely untenable. Kate later confirmed that season was a significant reason she chose to walk away. That's not a PR line. Watch the season back and you'll understand immediately.
The man who created the problem kept his job. The woman who endured it left the franchise. Below Deck has never quite replaced what it lost when Kate walked. Ashton faded into obscurity. Make of that what you will.
SCANDAL #6. Kyle Stillie Claims He Slept With a Married Charter Guest — Denies It to the Captain — Then Toasts to "Getting Away With It."
Kyle Stillie — Below Deck S12
Below Deck, Season 12. Kyle Stillie spent a crew night out bragging to his castmates that he had slept with a married charter guest — in the water, at the beach, while her husband was on the same boat. "I f—ked Helen in the water," he announced cheerfully. Later that night, to chief stew Fraser, he elaborated with details too specific to reprint here. Fraser was not amused. Neither was anyone else.
When the story spread and Captain Kerry got wind of it, Kyle did what any sensible person would do in his situation: he denied everything. "100 percent, dead straight in the eye, I did not do it, Cap," he told Kerry. Kerry investigated. The crew — who had all heard the original claim — concluded Kyle had probably been making it up for laughs. Kerry chose not to fire him. "I can't fire the guy on a hunch," Kerry said in a confessional.
Kyle kept his job. He toasted his crewmates at the next dinner with what may be the most self-incriminating speech in Below Deck history: "Sometimes you get away with things in life, and I'm really, really proud of the fact I got away with something I wasn't supposed to get away with." When a producer asked him privately whether the whole thing was a joke, he smirked, shrugged, and said: "Give Helen a call."
He bragged about it. Denied it under pressure. Kept his job. Then toasted to getting away with it — on camera, to his entire crew. Whether or not anything actually happened in that water, Kyle Stillie managed to create a scandal out of thin air and then survive it through confident lying. Helen Hoey has not publicly commented. Her husband has not publicly commented. Kyle is still smirking.
SCANDAL #7. Malia White Arrives With a Secret Ex, Falls for Someone Else, and Watches the Entire Thing Explode on National Television.
Below Deck Mediterranean, Season 2. Before Malia White became the bosun who reported Hannah Ferrier and secured her reputation as the most divisive figure in Below Deck Med history, she was a deckhand with a secret. She and chef Adam Glick had history before filming Season 2. They agreed to keep it quiet. They failed within weeks.
While onboard, Malia developed genuine feelings for bosun Wes Walton. Adam — who had come aboard specifically to reconnect with her — spiralled accordingly. The tension between all three became the centrepiece of the season, with Malia eventually acknowledging at the reunion that yes, she had feelings for both men simultaneously. Nobody emerged from it well. Adam was unhinged. Wes was blindsided. Malia was honest, at least eventually.
By Below Deck standards, this is practically a Jane Austen novel. Nobody got fired. No maritime laws were broken. It was spectacularly messy — and it introduced Malia to the franchise in a way that ensured nobody would ever have a neutral opinion about her again. Mission accomplished, presumably.
SCANDAL #8. Lexi Wilson Declares She's "Done Being Nice." A Hot Tub, a Crew Mess, and a Dinner From Hell Later — She Proved It.
Below Deck Mediterranean, Season 6. Lexi Wilson arrived on Season 6 as a former Miss Bahamas with a chip on her shoulder the size of a superyacht. When she announced midseason that she was "done being nice," the crew should have taken it as the threat it was. They did not.
The first implosion happened on a crew night out. Hot tub, Truth or Dare — what could possibly go wrong. Everything, as it turned out. Lexi pushed deckhand Mzi Dempers in the crew mess, physically imposed herself on Lloyd Spencer in the jacuzzi, and went on a tirade that left the entire crew shaken. Captain Sandy later admitted she wasn't told the full story that night — and said if she had been, Lexi would have been fired immediately. She wasn't. She stayed.
Weeks later, during a crew dinner, Lexi told chef Mathew Shea his parents "should have aborted him" — then looked directly at the cameras and told him she would smack him if they weren't rolling. Captain Sandy had finally heard enough. Lexi was fired. She skipped the reunion. She deleted her Instagram. Somewhere, a Miss Bahamas sash is gathering dust.
"Done being nice" as a personal brand strategy: not recommended. The hot tub night alone should have ended her time on the boat. That it took two more incidents — and a threat delivered directly to camera — says something about how generously Bravo extends the benefit of the doubt. Captain Sandy has since said she wishes she'd known sooner. So do we all.
SCANDAL #9. Ruan Irving Boards a Commercial Vessel With Falsified Paperwork. Paying Guests Were Onboard. Nobody Caught It.
Below Deck Mediterranean, Season 8. Season 8 was already exhausting — Kyle Viljoen's behaviour toward Natalya Scudder, bosun Luka Brunton's struggles, Captain Sandy's increasingly visible frustration with all of it. Then came a scandal that was quieter than the rest and significantly more serious: crew member Ruan Irving had boarded a working commercial yacht with falsified certifications.
On a vessel operating under maritime law with paying guests aboard, crew certifications are not a box-ticking formality. They exist because the sea does not care about your storyline and the law is not flexible. Ruan departed. The conversation about how the vetting process had failed was tense, and based on everything we know about Bravo's approach to uncomfortable information, probably happened largely off-camera.
Less dramatic than a hot tub meltdown. Significantly more serious. Guests paid tens of thousands of dollars to charter that boat, trusting that every person onboard was certified to be there. Someone wasn't. That's not a reality TV storyline. That's a liability. And a question about how thoroughly anyone was vetted before filming began.
SCANDAL #10. Jean-Luc Cerza-Lanaux Denies His Own Baby, Confirms Paternity, and Then Continues His Life Entirely Unchanged.
Below Deck Sailing Yacht, Season 2. Jean-Luc Cerza-Lanaux and Dani Soares were inseparable during Sailing Yacht Season 2. Cameras were rolling around the clock. When Dani announced she was pregnant months later, the timeline was not ambiguous. Jean-Luc's response was to go silent, then deny paternity, then request a DNA test — which confirmed what Dani had said all along.
At the Season 2 reunion, Dani delivered what may be the most quietly devastating line in Bravo history. When Andy Cohen asked about the father, she said: "This baby was made during the season while we had cameras 24/7 with us and I only slept with one guy, so…" She left the rest in the air. The audience understood completely. Jean-Luc was somewhere offstage, presumably counting ceiling tiles.
He confirmed paternity. He cited COVID border closures as the reason he couldn't visit his daughter Lilly Rose in Australia. The borders reopened. He got a new girlfriend. He disabled comments on Instagram. Dani raised Lilly alone — with considerably more grace than the situation deserved.
A bosun climbed naked into a sleeping crewmate's bunk. A network kept a man on air through a Rolling Stone exposé and into a federal lawsuit. A racist post was fired mid-broadcast. A meticulously timed cabin dispute coincided — by pure coincidence, apparently — with a Valium report and a fan favourite's firing. A chief stew left the franchise because the man who made her season unbearable kept his job. A deckhand announced his married-guest liaison over drinks. A deckhand boarded a commercial vessel with fake certifications. A deckhand denied his own child until DNA disagreed. Twenty-plus seasons. This is what the receipts look like. The sea is unforgiving. So is this website.
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