Who knew Salt Lake City and Down Under would make for the perfect television crossover?
For the first time in Real Housewives history, the women of Salt Lake City merged with the crew of Below Deck Down Under for a highly anticipated three-episode crossover event. To intersect the casts, Bravo’s cameras filmed both shows at the same time for two separate episodes that will play out on both The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and Below Deck Down Under.
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Housewives have graced the decks of the yachting franchise in the past, but never has a full cast chartered their own superyacht — and had their trip documented for both franchises. It’s a moment that was years in the making for Bravo, one Noah Samton says couldn’t have hold off any longer.
“This is something we discussed at Bravo for many years,” the svp of unscripted production for NBCUniversal (who was on deck for filming) tells The Hollywood Reporter of the Real Housewives–Below Deck crossover. “It felt like, finally, okay, we can’t wait anymore. We got to make this happen.”
And make it happen Bravo did, but not without a myriad of bumps in the road. One of the greatest obstacles they ran into was the capacity of people allowed on the boat. Because two separate shows were being filmed at the same time, Samton says members of each production crew had to take turns being on deck.
“There are very specific specifications of how many people can be on that boat, so we cannot have a full crew for both shows. That was a constant issue from the very beginning of when we first started discussing the idea to film. It was the biggest challenge,” he says. “And it’s actually what stopped us from doing it previous years with other Housewives or other Below Decks.”
Ultimately, they acquired “a special dispensation” from the flag state that regulates the boat that allowed more people to be on board, but that didn’t stop a constant filter of crew members. “Every minute of the charter, it was like, ‘Who’s getting on? Who’s getting off? Can we borrow your cameraman here?’” Samton adds.
Another challenge that arose with limited staffing was a limited number of supplies, which forced The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and Below Deck Down Under production teams to “share resources,” including the camera crew.
“At one point, I told the Below Deck team, ‘If you have to have the surveillance cameras cover something happening in the galley or in one of the cabins, just let it play there. Don’t worry. Let the big cameras go with the housewives for now,’” he reveals.
For Samton, it was “very important” all events covered in the Salt Lake City cut would be later depicted on Down Under. There were discussions about which moments from the episodes to keep in the show that served both stories, including a beach picnic scene from the second episode of the Real Housewives point-of-view.
“The Below Deck team said, ‘Nothing really happens for us on this, we want to cut it out of the show.’ But the Salt Lake City team said, ‘No, we really need it. Mary [Cosby] calls Meredith [Merks] boring. Can we keep it in the show?’” he explains. “So I had the two different production companies arguing their case. Ultimately, the Below Deck team agreed to put a version of it into their episode so it felt to viewers like they’re seeing the same story, but from two different sides.”
In a few months, viewers will gain access to “a lot of fun little juicy tidbits” that arose from the crew’s perspective of working for the ladies of Salt Lake City — including “if the Housewives are good tippers or not.” In fact, Samton “found the Down Under episodes even more exciting” because of the added shock value of the yachties “having to deal with the complete mayhem of the housewives. [It] was just endlessly fascinating.”
One behind-the-scenes moment that stands out to Samton arose amid Lisa Barlow and Heather Gay’s blowout argument at the tailend of Salt Lake City’s seventh episode. After their fight, the former housewife stormed off and sought refuge on a swim platform at the back of the superyacht.
That moment, though, occurred at the exact same time the crew working on the series was supposed to clock off for the night. And how do the camera crew, producers and showrunners exit the yacht? Via that swim platform that Barlow had a meltdown on, of course.
“We’re getting ready to get off [for the night,] and Lisa and Heather have a big fight. Lisa gets very upset. She’s completely distraught, and she goes on the floating dock, which is our exit to to get off the boat. And we cannot leave,” Samton recalls. “There’s this shuttle boat, and it’s circling the yacht like an airplane without a runway, trying to find a place to land for us to get off the boat.”
“We ended up having to sit there for 45 minutes to an hour past the end of the shift, waiting for Lisa to calm down,” he adds. “She had a call with her husband, John, and we all felt bad because she was so upset. But we were also like, Okay, we’re exhausted. Can we please go home now?”
Despite what came across in the slate of Real Housewives episodes, the yacht crew were “not encouraged at all” to interact with the women. That would have been a hard suggestion abide by, especially given the star-studded cast list of the Down Under crew.
With Jason Chambers returning to his post as captain, former Below Deck Sailing Yacht star Daisy Kelliher joined the crew as chief stew, while Down Under season two alumni João Franco and OG Below Deck chef Ben Robinson rounded out the returning yachting cast.
The Sailing Yacht spinoff, meaning, has been ridden in controversy after a former makeup artist accused Gary King, one of the show’s stars, of sexual misconduct, leading to a larger lawsuit filed against King, Bravo and NBCUniversal.
“At the moment, Below Deck Sailing Yacht is not happening, and Daisy is somebody we’ve always loved working with,” Samton says. When asked if Kelliher’s casting on Down Under indicates that Sailing Yacht is “on pause,” he says, “Everything is always in the conversation, and nothing is ever an official pause. It’s very much a ‘we’ll see.’”
Robinson’s return to the Below Deck franchise is one that stands out, and Samton reveals he wasn’t even meant to be on the series.
“We actually had a different chef planned who was supposed to be on this season. That chef got cold feet or, for whatever reason, dropped out very last minute, a week or two before we were supposed to start filming,” he says, adding that Chambers suggested hiring Robinson instead, who was going through “a very specific life situation that made it [where] there were reasons he wanted to get away from his life on land and get on a boat.”
The crossover will mark the first charter of Below Deck Down Under season four, which Samton teases made the experience “even more difficult” as Chambers set sail with a brand new crew. Viewers will see more on that when the installment airs in 2026, though Samton affirms that the network did float around ideas on how they could have had both shows air at the same time. (“Unfortunately, programming schedules are not the easiest thing to move around,” he clarifies.)
With Salt Lake City’s third and final crossover episode airing Tuesday, the consensus at Bravo is that the merge was a “huge success” — and the ratings concur. The network reveals across a seven-day basis, the seventh episode of RHOSLC (the first of the Below Deck crossover) turned out a season to-date high with 2.4 million viewers across platforms. That makes the debut episode of the crossover the most watched episode of the Salt Lake City-based Real Housewives series since season five’s initial reunion episode.
Still, with all its prosperity, that doesn’t mean the network is ready to start planning their next Real Housewives and Below Deck crossover.
“I’m not thinking about the next crossover quite yet,” Samton admits. “[We] might want to wait a season or two before we explore that idea again, and also I want to see how Below Deck Down Under episodes are received. I think it’s a super fun thing, but it’s something special. It’s not something you want to do too often.”
New episodes of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City season six release Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on Bravo, and stream the next day on Peacock. Season four of Below Deck Down Under will premiere on Bravo in early 2026.
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