Was Captain Lee Rosbach as reluctant to be a part of Under Deck as beforehand reported? Or was he a little into changing into the “stud of the sea” and finally the face of the franchise? Government producer Mark Cronin recounts how Rosbach ended up at the helm. And Cronin joked that regardless of tales pointing to Rosbach grumbling about being the present’s captain, he was truly fairly into the mission.
‘Below Deck’ and the yacht proprietor had a large captain drawback earlier than cameras began rolling
At the time, Cronin stated he didn’t understand the boat wanted an precise captain. “It was a lot of learning on the job,” Cronin informed Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
“We thought we could come down and replace the entire staff of the boat, except for we knew we had to keep the engineer, but we didn’t suppose we had to maintain anyone else,” he recalled. “We thought we didn’t want a captain. However you probably have a license to drive a boat this huge, we’ll put you on it. You’ll drive a boat this huge. Nevertheless it seems that in yachting, a license to drive a boat that huge isn’t sufficient to drive a boat that huge.
“You have to have spent time as the first mate on a boat that size and worked occasionally under another captain,” Cronin remarked. “And then eventually it might be ready to go. We brought our own captain down and we thought he was going to take over. A young guy … and we were just sorely mistaken. And the owner was not willing to let us have that guy steer the boat.”
‘Below Deck’ wasn’t going to compromise authenticity
The yacht firm had one other concept however that didn’t fly with Cronin. “And so they started saying things like, well, you can pretend like your guy … pretend he’s the captain and our guy will step behind the cameras sometimes and let you get a shot of him at the wheel,” he stated. “But he’s never going to really drive this boat and he’s never going to really be the captain of this boat.”
“And we were like, you don’t understand,” he informed the firm. “Like, that’s not what we’re doing. You know, in a spectrum of reality shows, we’re way over on the authentic side of the reality show world. And we are trying to tell a true story of what’s going on. And you can imagine the confusion of the crew when they don’t know who the captain is. Like ‘oh, that’s our TV captain and this is the real captain.’ That was not going to work for us. That was just going to be a complete mess. So we were stuck.”
Bravo didn’t need Captain Lee at the ‘Below Deck’ helm
That’s when Rosbach got here into the image. “We had to go to Lee and say, well, if our guy can’t run this boat and you have to stay, will you please stay and be our captain?” he remembered asking Rosbach. “And I’ll be honest with you, Bravo wasn’t even really in favor of it. They felt like, wow, geez, that guy’s old for Bravo. And he didn’t go through the casting process. We don’t have videotape on him. And we didn’t pick him out as a TV star. We spent all this time casting and all of a sudden that they were going to start shooting and you’re inserting this guy?”
“And we were like, well, I think it’s cool,” Cronin asserted. “I think we have a salty, old, salty captain. And I think he’s a silver fox, as you say. You know, I think he’s a sexy guy. And I think, you know … I think it’s going to work. And luckily, Lee was into it too. I don’t know what he says these days about how reluctant he was. He wasn’t that reluctant, was like it was OK with him. And he was going to be the star of our show. He didn’t put up that big of a fight.”
This text is a component of Showbiz Cheat Sheet’s multi-part collection based mostly on an unique interview with Under Deck creator Mark Cronin. In 2013, Cronin developed the collection, which follows the secret lives of yachties who serve the wealthy and well-known. The “upstairs/downstairs” collection paperwork what actually occurs with the crew professionally and personally, “below deck.”