Is Below Deck scripted?

Below Deck has viewers hooked. It has provided a global audience with their first window into the world of luxury superyachts, and they can’t get enough.

The drama, the action, the relationships, the work environment, the beautiful landscapes—it has all the necessary ingredients for an addictive reality TV show. And viewing figures over the past decade suggest it has staying power.

As with any popular show, there is an insatiable desire among fans to know exactly what goes on behind the scenes. Do the cast get along in real life? How much do they earn? Are the cameras genuinely allowed to film everything?

We’ve shone a spotlight on the secret rules that get followed during filming and a selection of mind-blowing production facts, but there’s one question we’re always asked that we haven’t answered before… until now.

Q: Is Below Deck scripted? A: No.

The direct answer to this question is a definitive ‘no’. Nobody appearing on the show is reciting lines from a script, nor is anything staged in the strictest sense of the word. However, as with a lot of things in television, some additional context is required to achieve a better understanding of how the show is constructed.

Below Deck is a reality TV show, not a documentary

While the show isn’t scripted, it is dramatised. This is the bedrock of reality TV; it’s how producers and editors ensure their show is entertaining and ultimately keeps fans tuning in. Some cynics believe that dramatisation means each and every situation is artificial, and that might be true of some shows, but it’s certainly not true of Below Deck.

As far as the Below Deck producers are concerned, there are a couple of things they do to influence the direction of the show before the charters get underway. The most obvious is the cast they assemble each season. Every crew member needs to be qualified and competent at the job, but beyond that, producers decide on the final line-up based on personality and what each individual is likely to bring to the boat. The hope, of course, is that the group provide plenty of laughter, fun and confrontation throughout the season, so casting directors opt for a mixture of different characters.

Former crew members have spoken about this in interviews. Chef Ben Robinson, who appeared in numerous seasons of both Below Deck and Below Deck Mediterranean, told the Mirror in 2020, “It’s a TV show, they like drama and they like relationships.”

Noah Samton, senior vice president of current production for Bravo, backs up this assessment. In a feature from the New York Times, he explained, “People who aren’t on TV are pretty good at keeping drama behind closed doors. We’re really good at finding the people who are going to wear it on their sleeves.”

The other thing producers have an element of control over before filming commences is who charters the yacht. All the charters are genuine and the full amount is paid for by the guests, but ultimately producers choose which parties are accepted. They pick groups that will pose a challenge to the crew, or perhaps take them out of their comfort zone. As a result, you can see how some social situations might be engineered, but certainly not staged or choreographed.

In post-production, the show obviously gets condensed into individual episodes. Editors are tasked with crafting suitably entertaining episodes from the footage that has been shot, which inevitably means they have control over what gets shown and what doesn’t. They create the narrative—and that narrative might not be a completely accurate depiction of what actually happened.

For maximum impact, jump cuts and specific shot sequencing are used to evoke emotion and create a sense of theatre. This is dramatisation in its simplest form. It’s deliberate, but it isn’t specifically used to deceive viewers. Rather, it’s implemented to improve the entertainment factor of the finished product.

With all of this in mind, it does mean that what we see on Below Deck isn’t necessarily the most precise representation of yacht charters, or indeed the yacht-crew profession. But it isn’t a million miles away either. It sits somewhere in between.

Nobody involved in the creation of the show is deliberately trying to distort reality and create a false idea of the industry. Below Deck isn’t a documentary series; it’s a reality show—and unapologetically so. The show’s producers and editors aim to create compelling TV, and dramatisation (to varying extents) enables them to achieve it.

The greater the awareness that exists around these facts, the more informed viewers will be as to where the show sits in terms of its portrayal of the industry.

---

Read more Below Deck articles in our dedicated library. Alternatively, if you're inspired by the thought of working on a yacht, you can search for a Crew Agent near you.