Newly engaged Aesha Scott reunites with Captain Sandy Yawn on 'Below Deck Mediterranean,' after two seasons on 'Below Deck Down Under.'
Aesha Scott is feeling "very happy and grateful" for two things right now: her return to Below Deck Mediterranean and her engagement to longtime love Scott "Scotty" Dobson.
The longtime Bravo stewardess, 32, said "yes" to Scott last month. Now, they're slowly starting to think about their wedding.
"We decided that we want a long engagement, because it's really exciting saying he's my fiancé," Aesha beams to ET. "All going well, I won't ever be a fiancée ever again, and I also, we both just have such busy years, the thought of planning a wedding, really, for the summer is just too much, so we're gonna wait 'til next summer."
The one thing Aesha knows for sure is, the pair plans to say "I do" in their native New Zealand, and they'll live out her '90s rom-com fantasy on the dance floor.
"I just really want Scott and I to have this Joey-Dawson moment that I have forced on him ever since we first started dating," she muses, referencing Katie Holmes and James Van Der Beek's characters from the hit teen soap Dawson's Creek.
"So, when we first started dating, we went on a road trip and we drove through Santa Barbara, and I saw this wharf -- and you can walk underneath the wharf, like, through the wooden pillars -- and we don't have that in New Zealand," she explains. "And when I saw that I was like, 'Oh my god! It's like the opening scene of Dawson's Creek with Joey and Dawson, whatever."
"And then, I love the 'Kiss Me' song [by] Sixpence None the Richer," she continues. "So, every time we go to Santa Barbara now -- because he's got family there -- I make him be Dawson and I'm Joey and we run around under the wharf and I'm, like, running through the pillars. I'm looking back at him. I'm blinking my eyes and he's chasing me, but I'm just out of grip, and I have that song playing. And so, at the wedding, I want to do our first dance to 'This Will Be (an Everlasting Love),' and then for the second song, I want the MC to say, 'OK, all the couples can come join Aesha and Scott...' and I want ['Kiss Me'] to play, and I want all of the girls or whoever, I want everyone to look at the person they love and I just want them to cry and dance in each other's arms, and it's gonna be so beautiful."
"I'm a '90s kid and it took me 30 years to find the person that I can dance to the 'Kiss Me' song with, and I'm going to bloody well do it, OK?" she laughs.
There's one other fantasy Aesha isn't sure will pan out, though. Scott previously agreed to take her last name, making him Scott Scott.
"We're starting to falter on it a little bit," she confesses. "I still really want him to go ahead, I think he still really wants it to go ahead, but I did say to him the other day, just make sure that by you doing this, you're not gonna be breaking your dad's heart, or insulting your family in some way, because his family's a little bit more traditional than mine. So, I just want him to make sure that that's all clear, and then we can go ahead with Scott Scott."
Outside of captains, it's rare for crew members featured on Below Deck to be married; Aesha says tying the knot won't change a thing for her.
"I think the reason that Scott and I have always worked so well is because we just let each other do exactly what we want to do, and we have so much trust," she offers. "I do leave him for months at a time, and luckily he's so secure in himself and so secure in us that it's just, there's absolutely no problem. There's never been any paranoia or distrust or anything. So, I think as long as I personally want to keep yachting then I will."
And for now, Aesha very much wants to keep yachting. Season 9 of Below Deck Med is her fifth season as a TV yachtie; she previously appeared on seasons 4 and 5 of Med and led two seasons of Below Deck Down Under. It's unclear if she'll return to that series for another go-around. Bravo has also yet to publicly announce whether it's returning for a third season.
"My preference would be to just stay in the Med, because it's very intense," Aesha says, explaining that her choice has more to do with the added pressure of filming than it does with taking an average yachting job.
"It's like taking a yachting season, which is already the hardest thing you've ever done, and then also putting cameras in your face all the time," she rattles off. "And you've got all these, like, really short trips, one after another, and these new preferences; new guests, put new things in the fridges... it's just a lot. So, I think, yeah, we'll see, but doing that twice a year would probably turn me insane."
The Med is also where it all began for Aesha. She started her yachting career in the South of France, which was also the setting for her Below Deck franchise debut working under Captain Sandy Yawn. Season 9 serves as a reunion for them, too, and a change of pace for Aesha, who spent her past two seasons under Captain Jason Chambers' leadership.
"With Jason, we had very much, like, this brother-sister relationship," she reflects. "I feel like we were very equal. Like, part of me didn't really feel like he was my boss; he was more my friend that helped me a lot."
"Sandy and I do have a relationship outside of yachting, you know, I go and visit her and [her now-wife, Leah Shafer] in Denver," the part-time Colorado resident continues. "We do have a very big respect for each other personally."
Aesha hits back at the criticism Sandy often gets in the social media comments section, predicting season 9 will change some viewers' minds about Below Deck's first (and only) female captain.
"When you read comments online and stuff, people are like 'Micromanager! Blah, blah, blah...' but I did not have that experience at all," Aesha shares. "She stood back, she let me run my department the way I wanted to run my department. If I needed her, then she would help me unpack bags and, like, clean a cupboard. She was so incredible in that way."
"I don't think it's fair how people do see her, because she has such a huge heart and she's such a wonderful person," she adds. "For me, she was just very helpful and very supportive."
Aesha needed that support in what she calls her most "chaotic" season on Below Deck yet. Her team -- Elena Dubaich and Bri Muller -- proved quite difficult to manage. Aesha goes so far as to label them the "troublemakers" of the charter season.
"It was the first time that I had to deal with two of my crew members not getting on, and they both would tell me their sides of the story so convincingly," she teases. "And they're so well behaved when I'm around that there was absolutely no way that I could figure out who was telling the truth."
"I just could not get to the bottom of the situation," she continues. "I got to the point where I just was like, I genuinely don't know what to do and I had to ask Sandy for some help."
Even so, Aesha calls this her "favorite chef stew season by far" out of the three she's done on TV.
"It still required like a lot of growth, and making some mistakes," she says. "But I think, because it is my third season, I really found this year, it was very hard to fluster me."
As for the rest of the crew, Aesha fell hard for the deck team. She now counts deckhands Joe Bradley, Nathan Gallagher and Gael Cameron (her bunkmate) among her besties, though the latter two create a little drama of their own aboard motor yacht Mustique. Nathan and Gael spark up a romance, despite Gael walking onto the ship in a relationship.
"That was a really hard thing for her to navigate," Aesha previews. "I tried to help her through it as much as I could, but what I will say is, [her initial relationship] ending was definitely for the best. Like, if you heard some of the things that he would say to her, and read some of the messages he would send, it wasn't the nicest boyfriend and, I mean, yeah... he didn't exactly inspire loyalty."
Below Deck Mediterranean airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo, with episodes streaming next day on Peacock.
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