below deck ashling elizabeth

We Spoke To Ashling From ‘Below Deck’ & She Spilled Loads Of Tea On Elizabeth & Rachel

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ICYMI, some of the best reality TV drama is going down at sea, and if you’re not watching the current season of Below Deck, you’re sorely missing out.

This season has been chaotic to say the least. Firstly, the superyacht’s chef Rachel Hargrove is one of most bonkers crew members in Below Deck’s history. She randomly quit mid-season, then returned just as a new charter was commencing.

Then there’s Elizabeth Frankini, who is constantly breaking the rules. In the latest episode, Elizabeth was fired after she slept in a guest cabin without asking permission from Captain Lee or Chief Stew, Francesca Rubi. It wasn’t a huge surprise, as Elizabeth had previously struggled performing her duties throughout the season, oh and there was that one time that she nearly poisoned the crew by accidentally making mustard gas in the laundry.

Elizabeth’s departure leaves the two remaining Australian interior crew members — Ashling Lorger and Francesa — down a stew. Elizabeth and Ashling both recently appeared on Watch What Happens Live and there was no love lost between them. Elizabeth accused Ashling of being nice to her face, but not behind her back. “I don’t know where you come from down under, but where I come from we call that ‘fake’,” Elizabeth told host Andy Cohen. To this, Ashling replied, “So you’re dividing Australians vs. Americans? That’s pretty nasty.”

Following this on-screen beef, we spoke to Ashling and she did not hold back on her views on Elizabeth, or some of her other Below Deck co-stars.

On what the vibe on the boat was like after Rachel quit:

“I mean, any crew member who quits without notice, it’s sort of [feels] like a punch in the face to the rest of the crew. We were under the pump at that point, we were halfway through the season, we were thinking, ‘What are we going to do? We have no chef. Who is going to replace her?’. She was an amazing chef. The food she was bringing out was impeccable, but yeah, it was a punch in the face to us.

“But at the end of the day, for the rest of the crew it was kind of like the light at the end of the tunnel because of her personality. It was like you were walking on eggshells, you didn’t know what to expect. Was she going to be in a happy mood, or a sour mood, or in a completely crazy mood, would she be swearing and carrying on? In a way, there was a lot of relief [when she quit] but then a lot of worry too, because who was coming in next to replace her?”

 

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When asked if Below Deck accurately portrayed Rachel, Ashling replied: “She is 100% crazy. Wild. I think they portrayed her as pretty much exactly what she’s like in real life. She’s just crazy.”

On Elizabeth being fired for sleeping in the guest cabin:

“I think me being in the reality of that situation, I think it was a long time coming. It needed to be done on the third or even the fourth charter. Francesca had noticed that she wasn’t pulling her weight, she wasn’t helping, she wasn’t doing anything. She wasn’t performing to the high standard that you’d expect working on a superyacht,” she said.

“I think it [staying in a guest cabin] was the final straw. That was the cherry on top of the cake, really. She knew what she was doing, as a stewardess she had supposedly worked for five years in the industry. You learn that the moment you hop on board a superyacht, you don’t learn that after five years. I agree and backup Francesca in that scenario.”

On people online saying that Francesca gave Ashling preferential treatment over Elizabeth:

“I believe she didn’t. We got on well, and she would agree with me that it was because we both work at a higher level and we work really well together. Elizabeth worked well with us, but she would start a task, then never complete it, then move on to another task. Francesca and I just worked really well together as a team.”

On what it was like working alongside Elizabeth onboard:

“Everyone learns differently, but she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. She showed her true colours, she didn’t perform to a high standard, and she played the victim card: saying that everyone hated her or didn’t like her,” the Aussie stew told us.

Ashling also claimed that Elizabeth was different when the cameras were around. “I noticed during the first few days on My Seanna…every time we would have a conversation and a camera would come around the corner, she would automatically like pout and stick her hair to the side. At first, I thought it might have been like a thing that she does, but then I clicked after a week of working with her, oh no, she’s actually doing that in front of the camera.

“Her voice would change to this weirdly sexual way of talking, we’d be having conversations and she would stick her ass out and flick her hair, and I was like ‘What are you doing? Are you alright?’. I would say she was the only one acting up for the camera, the rest of us were very genuine. What you see is who we are.”

On where her friendship stands with Elizabeth:

“No, we’re not friends anymore. I think she has dramatised everything to the point where it’s actually so wrong in so many ways. She’s painted me out as a fake person, which is totally not true. I think she’s got nothing else to grab at, and she’s sick of all the attention being on her, because she’s so embarrassed by what she’s done on a national TV show — so she’s trying to make other people look bad. That’s why I’m no longer friends with her, and I can think of many other crew members who feel the same way.”

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Every season of Below Deck is available to stream on Hayu.