Much has changed in reality television since the heyday of MTV’s groundbreaking The Real World. During the show’s most memorable seasons, viewers were casually and continuously thrust into raw, disturbing scenarios that would trigger national discussions around sensitive topics like sexual violence, self-harm, and eating disorders.
In 2023, reality shows have got better at censoring selected shocking material and preventing unsafe situations. However, in a recent episode of Bravo’s Below Deck Down Under, a show generally described by fans as “comfort” and “background” television, things got unexpectedly real.
(Warning: This piece discusses sexual assault.)
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On Aug. 7, Bravo aired two back-to-back episodes of Below Deck Down Under, the franchise’s third spinoff about a group of young crew members and their no-nonsense captain, Jason Chambers, on the Northern Sun yacht. In the second episode aired that night, titled “The Turnover Day,” viewers witnessed bosun Luke Jones crawl into steward Margot Sisson’s bed naked. Sisson, who had been drinking heavily with the rest of the crew, was incoherent and too intoxicated to consent.
The events that followed were extremely unnerving: Behind the camera, production could be heard telling Jones multiple times to exit Sisson’s cabin, until one producer had to walk over to the bunk to persuade him to leave. When Jones finally came down, he repeatedly tried to shut the door as a producer on the other side kept propping it open. Jones ultimately stormed off angrily and locked himself in his own cabin.
After chief steward Aesha Scott informed Chambers about the incident, Jones was sent away the same night, and the next day, the captain immediately fired him. In the same episode, steward Laura Bileskalne was also terminated for blaming Sisson for Jones’ firing and for making repeated unwanted sexual advances toward another crew member, Adam Kodra.
After the episode aired, viewers applauded the show’s producers, Chambers, Scott, and their fellow crew members for swiftly intervening in both situations. A scene where Scott and the yacht’s chef, Tzarina Mace-Ralph, comfort Sisson, who regrets being drunk the previous night, is particularly moving.
However, some viewers were left wondering why the disturbing episode—which, by all accounts, came as a complete surprise, especially to those expecting the typical lighter fare—didn’t feature a content warning.
“The current-day standard is to put content warnings for anything that is remotely triggering,” says Shamira Ibrahim, a culture writer who frequently covers Bravo programs. “It can be anything from flashing lights for people who could have seizures… I’ve seen content warnings for cigarettes. So the fact that there wasn’t anything [that] was going to cause a warning was really striking to me.”
At the end of the episode, the editors inserted a title card with the hotline number for the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN). But the organization’s vice president, Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, says watching the attempted assault without a proper heads-up at the top of the episode may have been potentially retraumatizing for victims of sexual violence.
“We consider it good practice—and that it should be standard practice—to include a content warning in entertainment that is going to be showing scenes of sexual violence,” Simmons Kaleba told The Daily Beast. “Ultimately, we want to provide audience members who have experienced trauma, which most of us have, to make an informed decision as to whether they’re in a place mentally or in their healing journey to engage with that subject matter.”
Halle Nelson, a communication specialist at The National Sexual Violence Resource Center, echoed that sentiment, noting, “It’s important for production to consult with relevant experts to see what sort of trigger warnings might be necessary to help forewarn viewers and facilitate necessary conversation.”
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Dartnall, executive director at The Sexual Violence Research Initiative, said her organization does utilize these sorts of warnings, but pointed to recent studies that suggest such safeguards may not be as beneficial as viewers assume. Even so, Simmons Kaleba argues that content warnings are a useful, preventative measure for survivors.
“I think that the notices and advanced warnings can be important for survivors managing their mental health,” Simmons Kaleba said. “For a survivor of trauma, exposures to content about sexual violence can resurface similar reactions and emotions as the experience itself.”
The incidents involving Below Deck’s Jones and Bileskalne aren’t the first time sexual misconduct has been depicted on the franchise, as excessive alcohol consumption and hookups among crew members often blur professional and personal boundaries. In the third season of Below Deck Sailing Yacht, fans were outraged by a scene where a drunken crewmember, Gary King, discovers that he’s having sex with his less inebriated crewmate Ashley Marti while she’s giving him a massage. King is captured on mic saying “no” before Marti eventually exits the cabin. The following day, he said he didn’t recall the incident.
According to Buzzfeed’s lifestyle deputy director, Lara Parker—who’s a longtime fan of the Below Deck franchise and covered the recent Down Under episodes—the incident on Sailing Yacht, which aired last summer, was not addressed sufficiently on the show or in the aftermath.
“I think Andy [Cohen] brought it up [on Watch What Happens Live] and Gary made it clear that we were sort of blowing it out of proportion,” Parker said. “I think he just doesn’t know what sexual assault looks like, to be honest, because I really don’t think it was blown out of proportion. In fact, I think it was very much not discussed in the way that it should have been.”
Indeed, in many instances, stars of Real Housewives and other Bravo programs will appear on the network’s late-night talk show Watch What Happens Live to address or continue weighty discussions featured on their respective shows. For example, a few days after a 2022 episode of Summer House that featured a conversation about microaggressions, WWHL hosted the cast members involved to talk about the generally well-received and surprisingly non-confrontational discussion on the show. (The cursory segment did, however, largely come off as a PR opportunity following years of piling racial controversies rather than a meaningful, introspective discussion.)
Rather curiously, though, Bravo has yet to utilize WWHL to speak to any of the Down Under cast members involved in the recent situation or to further educate viewers on the topic of sexual assault.
In general, Parker says that much of the relief Below Deck fans felt about the recent Down Under episodes is because the show has handled these situations so poorly in the past. For example, she references Season 1 of the original Below Deck series, where a crew member named Kat Held was sexually harassed by a guest with no intervention from the boat’s staff or his fellow passengers. Similarly, in 2017, Below Deck fans complained about the mishandling of an incident where a steward named Jen Howell was groped on camera by a passenger.
“I was pleasantly surprised,” Parker said about the handling of the recent Down Under case. “But the context is that, because [the producers and Bravo] handled these situations so terribly in the past, we’re giving them credit.”
For Ibrahim, watching the Down Under scenario in light of the current unionizing efforts by Bethenny Frankel and other reality TV stars raises several concerns about the genre’s depiction of cast members’ trauma. On Aug. 4, Bravo’s parent company, NBCUniversal, received a letter from attorneys representing a group of reality stars employed across the media giant’s subsidiaries, accusing NBCU of “intentional infliction of emotional distress” and “denying mental-health treatment,” among other allegations. NBCU responded that it is “committed to maintaining a safe and respectful workplace for cast and crew on [their] reality shows.”
Likewise, Ibrahim questioned whether the entirety of the Below Deck footage should have been shown out of respect for viewers and the cast members involved, citing the specific allegations around exploitation of reality stars. (Sisson didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.)
“I think the way that this has specifically been filmed, depending on your perspective, as a cast member on the show, can feel like exploitation of your trauma,” Ibrahim said. “At what point do we understand how to actually handle these situations in a way that’s sensitive to viewers and sensitive to the cast?”
Ultimately, Ibrahim considers the portrayal of the disturbing incident a “net good,” despite the fact that it hardly puts a cap on discussions around sexual trauma in the Bravo-sphere. Similarly, Simmons Kaleba says that while the episode would have benefited from a content warning, such brazen instances of sexual misconduct are important for audiences to be aware of.
“In some ways, we think about sexual violence as something that only happens in these dark alleys,” she said. “But assaults really can occur in any situation.
“As we see on shows like this, it can happen in full view under lights and a camera,” she continued. “And the prevalence of it in our daily lives and showing how it can occur in daily life is an important aspect of educating the public.”
