‘Below Deck’: Izzy Wouters Says She Wouldn’t Have Applied for the Show if She Watched ‘Below Deck Med’ Season 5
Deckhand Isabelle “Izzy” Wouters from Below Deck said she wouldn’t have applied to be on the show if she had watched Below Deck Mediterranean Season 5. She said the fallout during last season left her feeling angry and upset and shared she never would have pursued a spot on the show had she viewed the season.
Wouters watched the show after guests kept asking her to compare her experience as a yachtie to Below Deck. “And I thought it was really cool,” she said on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast. And while she liked the show in general, she would have completely changed her mind about joining the series if she watched Below Deck Med Season 5.
“If I had seen the season of [Below Deck] Med, that’s just gone before I applied, I probably wouldn’t have applied,” she asserted. “That was, that was hectic. That was wild. And I was like, not impressed with a lot of the behavior I saw in that. And yeah, that put a bit of a bad taste.”
Izzy Wouters said problems during ‘Below Deck Med’ came from the top
Wouters offered specifics as to why she would have changed her mind about going on the show if she had viewed Below Deck Med Season 5. “I think it was just like the attitudes on board,” she explained. “Like there was obviously a lot of lovely people. Like Bugsy [Drake] means like so well. And I don’t think Jess [More] was being malicious or anything like that in her intentions.”
“Rob [Westergaard] did seem a gaslighter,” she said. “But just like that real kind of backstabbing and like, I didn’t even know what kind of attitude that came from the top. I was like, ‘Oh f**k.’ I would have been so scared if that sort of happens on our boat.”
“Luckily Captain Lee [Rosbach] is not like that,” she said. “And Eddie [Lucas] was like a dream bosun. I think I couldn’t have asked for a better bosun out of any of the ones that have been on Below Deck. But yeah, I watched Med and it was like post-traumatic stress just watching it.”
Wouters then reflected on how chief stew Hannah Ferrier was fired. Bosun Malia White snapped a photo of Ferrier’s unregistered valium and vape pen. She shared it with Captain Sandy Yawn and Ferrier was fired.
Izzy Wouters called out Malia White and Captain Sandy for how they handled Hannah Ferrier’s firing
“I think it was handled very poorly,” she remarked. Adding, “I felt so bad for Hannah, she did not deserve to be treated that way.”
“With Captain Sandy, it’s quite visible that Malia is her favorite and there is favoritism going on,” Wouters said. “It was like nepotism in a way. And it just seems like she’s had this bone to pick with Hannah for a long time.”
“And my take on it was that she finally found something that she could get rid of her with because even with like the whole valium thing, [in Australia] don’t have like a prescription slip like the prescription is on the box,” she described.
“So the box that she had, like with her in the office, actually had a prescription on it,” she said. “And I think the whole stigmatizing of mental health as well. Like calling a panic attack a ‘freak-out’ and saying she didn’t feel safe that someone who’d had a panic attack, you know, was on board.”
“Like who doesn’t experience panic attacks and stuff like that sometimes,” she added. “I thought that was a very, very poor way to handle it. And she didn’t seem particularly apologetic about it as well.” Wouters believes Rosbach and Lucas would have handled the scenario differently and with respect.
