Below Deck Down Under‘s Ellie Dubaich spoke out about the surprising offscreen divide between her and Daisy Kelliher and Jenna Woudberg.
“I was surprised because I didn’t mean to offend anybody. I was simply sharing what happened when I got the call after [stew] Joe [Caron] left,” Ellie exclusively told Us Weekly.
Ellie joined season 4 of Below Deck Down Under after some reconfiguration led to a stew position no longer being available but a spot in the kitchen opening up. After coming aboard the boat, Ellie agreed to make the move to the galley instead of interior, which caused backlash when Daisy and Jenna defended the assumption that someone’s job would have been at risk if Ellie hadn’t agreed to the swap.
“I was on my way to being a second stew because Captain Jason [Chambers] wanted to have the most experienced leadership team. I started working at sea when Jenna was in third grade in 2016. That’s not a dig. That’s a simple fact,” Ellie told Us. “It did make sense that Captain Jason would want me to be in a leadership position. [When he] asked me to change, I was happy to change. That’s all I was saying.”
She continued: “I was happy that things worked out the way they did. But the way Jenna and Daisy responded was mean-spirited. It was unnecessary, and I was taken aback. So I think it’s going to be a little bit indicative of how the two of them approached me this season.”
Ellie called Daisy’s reaction a “one-sided” issue.
“It started this season, and we’ll see that evolve,” she teased. “But I don’t really have an issue with Daisy. She doesn’t like me. She doesn’t seem to like me for whatever reason. We’ll see how that happens. But I don’t really have an issue with her.”
Looking ahead, Ellie made it clear there’s no bad blood on her end.
“I had no problems to begin with,” she continued. “Let’s move on — as far as I’m concerned.”
Ellie originally made an appearance on Below Deck Mediterranean before returning this season alongside Captain Jason. After having a rocky start in the franchise, Ellie called coming back again “overwhelming” since the season had already started.
“I don’t know any one of these people and they’ve already established relationships. I’m starting a new job and I didn’t even know I was going to be doing this job,” she noted to Us. “I literally found out at the airport [that I] was gonna be doing this job. So it was just so many new things happening which were out of my control. I just didn’t even have the time to overthink anything. I was just like, ‘I have to put one foot in front of the other. That’s all I can do.’ I was just doing my best.”
Below Deck Down Under airs on Bravo Mondays at 8 p.m. ET. New episodes stream the next day on Peacock.
