Below Deck Mediterranean fans are in for a wild ride when it comes to Ellie Dubaich‘s love triangle with Joe Bradley and Bri Muller.
“Things are about to get messy. If the viewers think they’ve already seen the biggest drama you have, this biscuit has not even hit the oven yet,” Ellie exclusively told Us Weekly about season 9, which premiered earlier this month. “We’re just preheating. It’s about to get crazy in the mud.”
Looking back at the season, Ellie could see what led to the ups and downs. “There was a bit of miscommunication in the very beginning because Bri was attracted to him — but she never really vocalized that to me,” she explained. “I felt like I made it a bit more obvious to her in some of our conversations we had.”
Ellie is now watching the show back with a new perspective — and she thinks Joe is most to blame.
“Yes 100 percent [he is at fault],” Ellie admitted. “After a while, I realized that it might’ve been Joe who was playing both parties. Because even watching just episode 2 where he was kind of going back and forth, I didn’t really realize the extent to which he was leading her on.”
The second stew added: “Because all the stories that came back to me was more like, ‘Oh, Bri is interested in Joe. He’s not really interested in her. He wants you.’ It was more like, ‘Oh, she was throwing herself at him.’ But then I realized actually it might’ve been him who was instigating it as well.”
According to the trailer for season 9, Joe will find himself caught between his attraction for Ellie vs. his feelings for Bri. The drama will seemingly create a divide between the trio, which isn’t something chief stew Aesha Scott could relate to.
“It’s so nice being taken and staying out of it,” Aesha said to Us, referring to her engagement to Scott “Scotty” Dobson.
After dating Scott for several years, Aesha learned some important lessons about sustaining a long term relationship, adding, We’re just very fortunate in the sense that we are both very independent and it helps as well that we have complete trust. We’re so stable that we know with every ounce of our being that once we are finished with the thing that we’re doing, we’ll be going back to that person and it will just carry on normal.”
Aesha gushed about how her and Scott balance each other out. “I actually love having the balance of going and doing my own thing and being completely alone and then coming back and having couple time,” she continued. “If I was with someone all the time, I’d go a bit crazy because I just love going off and he’s the same.”
Us broke the news in May that Aesha and Scott got engaged but they aren’t in a rush to get married.
“We talked about marriage very early on. But the biggest thing is I wanted it to be a surprise. I don’t want to expect it at all. I did not suspect a thing,” she continued. “We want to do a long engagement. We want to [get married] in the New Zealand summer and not this summer but next summer. We’ve got a lot of family and friends here so we want to give everyone a chance to save up enough money to turn it into a proper holiday. You can’t go to New Zealand for four days.”
Ellie, meanwhile, isn’t letting her love triangle with Joe and Bri turn her off boatmances completely. “It’s impossible for sure,” she told Us about not dating in the workplace. “But I would definitely try to avoid situations like this going forward.”
Below Deck Mediterranean season 9 airs on Bravo Mondays at 9 p.m. ET. New episodes stream the next day on Peacock.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
