“I was having an absolute hair nightmare, so when I watch it, all I can see is my hair.”
Photo: Fred Jagueneau/Bravo
So many women who have gotten famous on Bravo did so by being mean, delusional, or mean and delusional, give or take a drinking problem. None of those things applies to Aesha Scott, the Below Deck franchise fixture who became a fan favorite for being relentlessly positive, overwhelmingly nice, and delightfully weird. On a video call from Paris, which she’s visiting for the first time, she says, “I love history, so I want to go see where Marie Antoinette got beheaded.” That’s our Aesha, always a little gross and always a little off-kilter.
This wild Kiwi got her start as a regular old stew on seasons four and five of Below Deck Mediterranean before being promoted to chief stew for the first two seasons of Below Deck Down Under and was then recruited back to Below Deck Med starting with last year’s ninth season. She’s holding down the same berth for the show’s tenth, which premieres tonight on Bravo and the next day on Peacock, and interrupted her vacation to talk about the cast members she just couldn’t get along with, whether she would entrust her own imaginary yacht to Captain Jason or Captain Sandy, and the hair disaster she wants to publicly apologize for.
I ranked everybody who has ever been on Below Deck, and you landed at No. 2. What did you do to deserve such an honor?
You tell me! That was honestly the nicest thing ever, so thank you. Well, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like throughout this whole experience, I’m one of those cast members who have just stayed authentic and genuine to who I am. I feel like I’ve got this positive energy I bring around with me that spreads to other people. So it’s done me well.
Are you trying to get to No. 1? Are you coming for Kate Chastain?
I would love to be No. 1, but let’s be real, no one’s better than Kate, honestly. I remember I did an aftershow with her a couple of years ago and I finished and called one of the producers and was like, “That’s the first time in my life I have felt so dull and not funny in the slightest.”
It takes a lot to get asked back on Below Deck. What’s the secret to becoming a recurring character?
Well, your guess is as good as mine, especially because I’ve got a partner and often it’s preferred that there isn’t one. I’ve always just stayed true to who I am, and I think that’s the golden recipe for reality TV. And I think I’m really good at my job.
That’s the thing about Below Deck. I always say it’s really two jobs: your boat job and your reality-TV job. How do you balance those?
I feel very fortunate because, especially now that the show has gotten so big, I can see people coming on and freaking out and they’re really self-producing themselves. Ellie Dubaich, a stew from last season, was someone like that. Every time she had to answer a question, you could see her being like, What do the people want to hear? What’s going to make me look really good? Whereas for me, ever since I’ve come on, I’ve found it so easy to just completely forget the world’s even there, and I just still run around as though no one’s watching me.
You get essentially new stews every season. What advice do you give them about being a good one?
Don’t be lazy and don’t complain, especially in the Med because, for whatever reason, there always seems to be only three of us. That is so intense, running the boats that we do with only three people. And we’re all in these trenches together, so I just don’t want to hear any complaints. Negative energy spreads so quickly, so as soon as one person starts complaining, before you know it, the whole boat’s miserable.
And what advice do you give them about being a practitioner of the reality-television arts and sciences?
I really, really encourage them to just be as authentic as possible because the viewers aren’t stupid. Viewers can sense the energy through the TV screen, and they’ll be able to tell if you are being your real self or not. And if you’re not, they’re not going to like you because they’ll be like, But who is this person?
I saw you are currently on The Amazing Race Australia. How was that? And how did you convince your fiancé, Scott Dobson, to be on it with you?
I’ve watched that show since I was 13, so I’ve wanted to be on it for so, so long. But Scott didn’t take much convincing because he’s an adventure man himself. He loves traveling in new places, so he was the perfect person to do it with. The only thing he found hard was, similar to Below Deck, between each leg of the race, we’ve got to sit down and do those confessionals; he found those so awkward. I also found it hard because I’m used to sitting in the chair by myself. I just took every question they asked.
And they’re like, “Shut up. Let Scott say something.”
Exactly. I would say, every third question, I’d be like, sitting there busting to answer but just sitting and staring at him. Then he said, “When you sit there and stare at me, it makes my mind go blank and I can’t say anything.” So I’m like, “Well, what do you want me to do?”
Unlike a lot of stews, we’ve seen you work with both Captain Jason and Captain Sandy. How do your relationships with each of them differ?
Oooh, good question. I feel like when I worked with Jason, it was very much a brother-sister kind of relationship. We would just give each other shit all the time, make fun of each other. Whereas with Sandy, it’s like we’ve just been besties forever. I’ve got a very big inner child, and people don’t realize with Sandy that she also does. If I’ve got five minutes to spare, I always go to the bridge and sit with Sandy and we’ll just look at memes or show each other stupid shit and sit there crying laughing.
If you became a billionaire and owned a yacht, which one would you hire to captain it?
Oh, Sandy. Watching the way she backs a boat into any slip, she honestly is the most badass captain I’ve ever, ever worked with.
Yeah. Why couldn’t you just teach Jason to put his own contacts into his eyes?
I tried so many times, and that man — I don’t know where the connection gets lost between his brain and his fingers and his eyes. I sat for so long trying to teach him to put in his contacts, and he’s just incapable. It’s like that’s his Achilles’ heel.
Speaking of people who couldn’t master a job, why couldn’t Bri Muller learn how to do the fucking laundry last season?
Oh my God, you tell me. We realized at the end she’d asked for colors instead of initials because everyone’s brain works differently … but I don’t understand how on the side of the shirt there’s a tag, and the tag says A.S., and the only person on this whole goddamned boat with the initials A.S. is Aesha Scott. Whose else could it be? That’s part of learning to become a nice teacher, I guess.
I watched the first episode of the new season —
Can I just say, by the way, I’ve also just watched the first episode, and I really have to stress: This is literally the ugliest season I have ever done because I was having an absolute hair nightmare, so when I watch it, all I can see is my hair. It looks so bad, so I want to apologize for that.
I did notice when they showed some flashbacks, Her hair has changed. What’s going on?
I had this crisis about a month before I came. I was like, Oh my God, you basic bitch, you’ve been on TV for this many years and you’ve just always had long brown hair. How boring. And I was like, I’m going to cut it and go blonde. So before I came, I had fully bleached it and cut it off and then two days before we started filming, I freaked out and I was like, I look like I’ve got kidney problems. So sick. It just wasn’t sitting well. So then I went to dye it, but because I’d bleached it, the dye just fell out of my hair. So that’s why you see the browns, the reds, a bunch of blonde coming through.
Did production say anything when you showed up?
Well, you could tell they didn’t think it was my best look.
What I was going to say about the first episode is that the deck crew is a mess. How does that affect your job?
Well, them being a mess affects my job because it’s so intense and there’s so much to do, and the only way you can really get through sometimes is by being a family. And because the deck crew has four and I’ve got three, they usually have less to do, so we really rely on them helping in their spare time and changing our bins and helping us run plates. And if they’re an absolute mess out there taking three hours to do a half-hour job, that means any support I would get is taken away. But I must say, there is this selfish little part of me that’s so happy it’s finally not my department that’s gone to shit.
Do you think you would still be working on yachts if it weren’t for the show?
No, I don’t think so. Yachting is the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my life, but it’s so all-encompassing. When you’re there, you have to be fully in it, and you miss all the birthdays and the weddings and this and that. But that’s why I’m so grateful to the show because I get my hit of yachting without having to be in it the whole year.
What’s Aesha’s offseason look like?
I tend to be in a new place every two weeks because obviously the show is so big and things are blowing up so much that, like, I’ll go here for a week for some event, and then here for a week to do some press, and then I’m doing a brand deal over here. I’m just traveling all the time, which I’m very grateful for because I love change. As soon as I’m somewhere for a month, I’m like, Oh, get me out of here. The settled life is not for me.
You’re always so nice and agreeable. Was there ever a co-worker you just could not get along with?
Yeah, Ryan McKeown, the chef from Below Deck Down Under season one. I tried to be nice, but I just really, really struggled with Ryan.
He was a dick.
He was. He was so mean to me, and I feel like I never did anything to him. Tom Checketts, the chef from Below Deck Mediterranean, he was also so mean to me. And then remember Jamie Sayed, the bosun from season one of Down Under? Struggled to get along with him. João Franco, the bosun on Below Deck Mediterranean? Always struggled to get along with him. He’s great at work; it’s just outside of work. That’s the adult professional life, isn’t it? We’ve all got to work with people we don’t get along with very well.
If you ever retire from yachting, what will you miss the most?
The camaraderie. You end up just being such your authentic, silly, weird self with these people, and you grow such bonds because it’s like trauma bonding. No one outside of yachting can understand what it’s like.
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