Aesha Scott teases Below Deck Mediterranean season 9 steward drama: 'a recipe for disaster'

Below Deck Mediterranean season 9 chief steward Aesha Scott thought after a few seasons as a department head she was heading into an easy breezy season with her interior team.

Boy, she was so, so wrong.

Scott tells Entertainment Weekly she had to seek guidance from Captain Sandy Yawn because the amount of drama became so intense between Elena Dubaich and Bri Muller.

"I have had so many different personalities, and I'm such a good read of people," she says. "I thought that meant I would come in and just be the most incredible manager, and I know how to manage people. This is a piece of cake. But what actually happened this season, which you guys will see, is it got to a point where I was really struggling to know how to manage my girls and the way that they just kept butting heads the whole season. And it finally does get to the point where I throw up my hands, and I'm like, I actually don't know what to do. And I had to go to Sandy and ask her to help me and give me her wisdom. It was the first time that I'm like, 'I don't know how to manage these people.'"

Why so tense? Scott believes she was given two stews who couldn't be more opposite in terms of their personalities and work styles.

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"Ellie wants control. And she's very held back and restrained and she very much thinks about everything that she says and all of her actions, and she's very in control of her narrative kind of thing," Scott explains. "And then you've got Bri who's just like a hot mess. She's so emotional all the time. And I think they were just too opposite. And then you bring a love interest in and you bring power dynamics in, and it just was a recipe for disaster."

Throw in a boatmance with her interior and the dynamic becomes combustible.

Thankfully Scott found humor and refuge with a few other crew members. She bonded with deckhands Gael Cameron, Joe Bradley, and Nathan Gallager. Plus, chef Johnathan Shillingford brought a calming energy to the interior — something that doesn't often happen.

"The chef and I, we had a really good relationship. He's the calmest chef I've ever worked with. It's like he was on one level the whole entire season. No matter what got thrown at him, he was just like this Buddha the whole time. It was so amazing," Scott recalls.

She continued: So yeah, we had a really good communication style, and it just felt nice dealing with an actual adult and not as someone who has a f---ing tantrum whenever they have to work a little bit harder whenever they have to do their job," Scott adds, throwing a little shade at the contentious relationship she had with Below Deck Down Under season 1 chef Ryan McKeown.

While she didn't have to deal with McKeown, Below Deck Med season 9 is drama packed, Scott says. "There is a boatmance that happens — actually there are a few boatmances — but it just takes so many twists and turns that you probably don't expect and it just causes so much more drama," she recalls. "But they just cause a lot more drama than what I would hope that they would cause. So yeah, that's the root of a lot of the ups and downs."

Below Deck Mediterranean season 9 sets sail on Monday, June 3, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.