Luke Jones, one of the crew members on this season of Bravo‘s Below Deck Down Under, has been fired after entering a co-worker’s room without consent.
The reality show, which streams on Peacock, follows the day-to-day lives of superyacht crew members in different locales; this season takes place in Cairns, Australia. On Monday night’s episode, after a night out, Jones can be seen entering the room of crewmate Margot Sisson, clad in just a towel. Sisson is sleeping, and Jones gets in bed next to her. Members of the production and camera team tell Jones to get down and he becomes irritated, telling them to “fuck off for a second.”
He eventually leaves, but at one point you can see that he is naked and Sisson is still asleep.
The ship captain, Jason Chambers, was praised for his handling of the incident, stating in the episode that on the ship, “That door is our boundary. That door is not to be opened unless it’s consensual.”
Another Below Deck Down Under cast member, Laura Bileskalne, was fired on that episode for crossing a boundary with crewmate Adam Kodra. She also attempted to minimize what happened to Sisson, saying Jones might have been “joking.”
“God knows what that man’s done in the past,” said one tweet. “and I feel sorry for every woman he’s every behaved that way towards.”
While the cast and crew were applauded for stopping a potential sexual assault, and firing two people who crossed boundaries, fans also called out cast members from past seasons that showed “predatory behavior.”
This incident is part of a bigger conversation about predatory and toxic conditions in reality TV, which could be the next industry to strike. In April, former Love Is Blind contestants called out the grueling and “inhumane” working conditions on the Netflix show, which included allegations of sleep depravation and neglecting mental health concerns. Netflix’s upcoming Squid Games reality show was called out earlier this year for inhumane conditions.
