Below Deck’s Captain Sean – ‘I’m Pretty Sure They Played Me as the Villain’ This Season (Exclusive)
Captain Sean Meagher had a hunch he was portrayed as the Below Deck Season 9 villain, even before he saw the first episode. “I’m pretty sure they played me as the villain,” he laughed during an interview with Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “Did they play ominous music?”
But Meagher said he wasn’t overly gutted that first mate Eddie Lucas was lamenting for his “boat daddy” to return. The crew had a job to do and he was going to make sure he ran a tight ship during Captain Lee Rosbach’s absence.
Is Captain Sean Meagher a tough captain? Maybe on ‘Below Deck’ but not really in real life
In the trailer, Meagher is seen telling Lucas to position furniture on the dock for a beach picnic and is very specific about how he wants the setup to look. Lucas, who has only worked for Rosbach on the show isn’t used to such a hands-on approach. Looking back on the season Meagher laughed because he said he’s a lot more easygoing than he anticipates he comes off on the show.
“It’s very easy,” he said about how he works with crew. “Here’s the line. Don’t cross it. Because there’s no coming back. And if you question where the line is, ask me, I’ll tell you.”
He laughed again adding that he’s not a tough captain. “Oh my God there’s going to be some of my old crew who are going to watch it and be like ‘He’s not that tough,'” he said. “Or maybe they’ll say ‘Oh yeah, I forgot about that.'”
What were the ‘Below Deck’ Season 9 crew like?
And while Meagher doesn’t view himself as a tough captain, he does like to put the crew in different scenarios to identify their strengths. “I like getting into the mix,” he admitted. “You don’t know what someone is good at until you talk to them. So it was good that I was on the beach with Jake [Foulger]. And I liked talking to Frazier [Olender]. I didn’t get to talk to Heather [Chase] as much as I would have liked. But it’s like, what can you do and what can you bring to the table?”
“And then once you find out what you have in your arsenal, then you can begin to deploy that arsenal,” he said about the crew’s talents and strengths. Meagher also said he really liked chef Rachel Hargrove but didn’t get to sample her cooking. “I like Rachel a lot,” he said. “But I didn’t get a chance [to try her food]. So that was a bummer.”
Was Captain Sean prepared to stay for the entire ‘Below Deck’ season?
Meagher shared how he ended up stepping in for Rosbach during the initial charter. He had spoken to Below Deck producers in the past and respected how they filmed the show. He completed the interview and background check process a few years prior. So when producers needed a captain Meagher was the perfect fit, especially because he knew My Seanna.
“My Seanna wound up doing [Below Deck] season 9 in St. Kitts,” he recalled. “And I had been doing some relief work onboard the boat as a charter captain, and they asked me to deliver it down to St. Kitts. I said, ‘OK, I would.’ And with Covid and everything and all the restrictions, it was in the back of my mind that I might wind up staying down there and doing something with the show, even if it was just being the backup captain. Well, sure enough, Lee was delayed and I wound up stepping in.”
Meagher said he didn’t know how long he’d be on the show. But he was prepared to stay the entire season if he was needed. “It might have been, you never know,” he said. Due to coronavirus (Covid-19) regulations, Meagher wasn’t sure how the season would play out.
“I wound up having to be like in triple isolation for like a couple of weeks after because I did stay on the island just in case something happened again,” he said about when Rosbach eventually returns. He then joked, “And I got to admit I did become St Kitts premier monkey photographer. There are a lot of monkeys there. They eventually trusted me and invited me into their tribe.”
