Asked whether Season 12 was the “horniest, gayest season of Below Deck ever,” Fraser Olender quickly agreed.
“I absolutely think it is,” he admitted. “It’s fantastic. It’s the first time we’ve had so many LGBTQ+ cast members … Everyone just really wanted to get down.”
There were so many hookups among the crew, that Fraser “couldn’t keep track of who was getting with who.”
Who was the “personality hire” of Below Deck Season 12?
But the thing that really surprised Fraser was both chef Anthony Iracane and deckhand Kyle Stillie blaming him for their being in trouble. In Anthony’s case, stewardess Barbie Pascual told the chef that Fraser “got [him] fired” in Season 11. While Kyle blamed Fraser for telling Captain Kerry Titheradge about the deckhand’s inappropriate behavior with a guest.
“It’s the one-two punch of both cheffie and Kyle … pinning you as being responsible for their behavior,” ET’s Brice Sander observed. “It’s two different things, but the same results, right? Have you figured out why it landed there for both of them?”
“No,” Fraser answered, still seemingly perplexed. “I don’t understand why chef came in with such attitude toward me … I put my neck on the line to bring him back, and he still [he] was coming for me … Then Kyle [also] tried to pin it on me, too. I don’t get it.”
But then the conversation turned to Fraser’s breaking the fourth wall after Kyle came at him. He asked the cameras to stop filming him for a moment, which is kind of crazy because production is there to capture the drama. That’s your job, Fraser.
“I thought I was being set up,” he explained. At the same time the cast was filming, Season 11 was airing and Fraser felt “villainized,” dealing with a lot of social media reaction. “I was tired of being labeled as the bad guy, when I don’t think I deserved that.”
When it came to novice stew Solène Favreau, Brice questioned whether she was a caricature of what Americans think a French person should be. She worked at her own (slow) pace, took breaks whenever she felt like it and just generally made her supervisor Rainbeau de Roos‘ life miserable.
At that point, “we were so far into the season,” Fraser responded. “There was no point in getting someone new in who could potentially be worse than Soso.” He did his best to calm Rainbeau’s nerves before things could get physical and to teach her to deal with a difficult crew member. But he warned us, “Teaser: it gets rocky.”
In the end, Fraser admitted that though Solène was tough to get along with, she was “such a loveable human being … She was definitely a personality hire, for sure.”
Below Deck airs Mondays at 8/7c on Bravo in the US. It streams on Hayu in the UK and Ireland.
TELL US – DO YOU AGREE THAT SOLÈNE WAS A PERSONALITY HIRE? WHY DO YOU THINK BOTH ANTHONY AND KYLE BLAMED FRASER FOR THEIR TROUBLES?
