‘Below Deck’ Stew Sam Orme Disputes EP’s Claim Everyone ‘Quit’ During Season 1
Below Deck executive producer Mark Cronin recalled that the season 1 crew essentially quit following a charter guest drug bust during the first episode. However, season 1 stew Sam Orme remembers the instance very differently.
Bathrobe-clad photographer, Johnny Eyelash and friends were bounced when stew Kate Held 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 crew was leery of production.
“The whole cast quit,” he said. “They all basically said, ‘That’s it, we are not doing the show. If you guys are putting our licenses at risk by putting drugs on this boat, we quit.’”
Sam Orme thought the ‘Below Deck’ crew just got a vacation
Orme didn’t recall quitting. She was in the laundry room when Held found what appeared to be drugs. “I was kind of removed from that whole happening,” she recalled on Another Below Deck Podcast. “I don’t know where I was, probably down in the laundry room. And Kat was up 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 are leaving, or the guests are getting kicked out.”
But as far as everyone quitting because they didn’t trust production or thought production planted the drugs, Orme said nothing like that happened. “There was no planting of any drugs that I’m aware of,” she said in response to Cronin’s assertion. “In fact, it was a welcome break because we didn’t have to serve people for the next week. We just got some downtime. So I was out playing in the ocean.”
Mark Cronin worried he had a ‘Below Deck’ Season 1 disaster on his hands
Cronin recalled that the yacht crew took the drug bust very seriously and since it was the first time filming Below Deck the crew didn’t truly trust production.
“A lot of these people, they didn’t even have TVs, like they didn’t even know what reality TV was really,” he said. “They’re just yachties, really. Yachting is very important to them and keeping their yachting certifications and their licenses. And it wasn’t a joke. So they were looking at us like, ‘Well, what is this? Are you setting us up? Are these guests coming on here to make our lives difficult on purpose? And are you like to what extent are you messing with us?’”
“I would always say we’re not messing with you,” he recounted telling the crew. “We are not messing with you. These are charter guests. They’re paying. If their check cleared the bank, they’re coming on the show. I don’t do anything with them. I don’t prepare them or anything.”
“And they’d be like, ‘Yeah ok. But I bet this is a setup,’” Cronin said. “And then when Johnny Eyelash came on, it was OK, everything was going OK until they found the drugs. And then the cast was like, ‘Oh, it is a setup, and these guys don’t know how serious what they’ve just done to us is. Meaning us. Meaning the TV show.”
Mark Cronin had to convince the ‘Below Deck’ cast no one planted drugs on the boat
Cronin claimed that he had to convince the cast they weren’t setting them up. “I had to get with Captain Lee [Rosbach] and say, ‘Well, before I can address the issue with the whole cast quitting, we got to get rid of these guys,’” he recalled. “So Lee’s like, ‘That’s right, we’re getting rid of these guys. The charter’s over. We’re going back to the dock.’ So we go back to the dock.”
“Lee kicks them off the boat, and then I stop all the cameras, and we all had to come into the main saloon of the boat,” he said. “And I had to sit everybody down and said ‘We did not put drugs on this boat.’ Those guys, unbeknownst to us, brought something on this boat that’s not cool. I get it. And it’s a disaster. And I didn’t want to end this charter early. I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t know. It’s no good to me if we could shut down in the first episode either.”
