Below Deck‘s Cat Baugh said she wasn’t sure whether working on the St. David was the right choice — and fellow stew Barbie Pascual doesn’t disagree.
“I don’t think she should have ever signed up for this,” Barbie exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, February 29, after filming season 11 with Cat. “This is not for her.”
Barbie noted that Cat might have needed more experience before joining such a large vessel, adding, “I think yachting might [still] be for her. Small yachts and maybe even potentially mega yachts. One day she could climb the ladder there, but this environment was not for her. That’s OK. This is a lot.”
Earlier in the season, Cat admitted to chief steward Fraser Olender that she felt overwhelmed after she was assigned to help out everyone on the interior team. She slowly found her stride but the stews not having any ranks caused Cat to question her place on the boat.
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“It was an umbrella of everything [for her]. The pressure of being on St. David is not [like] being on any other boat,” Barbie said. “The pressure is — it’s a lot. And you’re working a lot of hours, and it really is not for everybody. I give her grace for that because it’s really, really hard.”
Throughout season 11, viewers have seen Barbie and Cat at odds — with Fraser stuck in the middle. While Barbie felt more experienced in a leadership role, Cat’s attempts to speak up created several fights. Fraser attempted to mediate but that only made his working relationship with Barbie worse.
While speaking with Us, Barbie shared what she would have done differently in her interactions with Cat.
“I should have been more sympathetic. But I was doing what needed to be done for the work to be done,” she continued. “Also I didn’t know her story. She never sat down with me. She sat down with Fraser and gave me the chance to be empathetic, so that was another kind of thing.”
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Cat previously opened up to Fraser about the “trauma” she experienced from her time in a religious cult.
“I was in foster care. My dad passed away when I was nine from Multiple sclerosis. And then my mom passed away when I was 13 just in her sleep. It was very sudden and no [they don’t know what it was],” she explained in a February episode. “So me and my brother were thrown into the system and separated.”
Cat was subsequently adopted by a family who didn’t want her in contact with her brother.
“The family I lived with I don’t talk to because they were like a cult religion,” she continued. “We were [in the same state]. But they wouldn’t even let me talk to him because he wasn’t religious. It was that extreme of a religion that they wouldn’t even let me speak to my own biological brother.”
As she got older, Cat made the decision to reconnect with her sibling. “Because I wanted to continue a relationship with my biological brother, they were like, ‘No. We don’t support that,’” she concluded. “Once I turned 18, I decided to choose my brother and choose my life. I decided to live for me and that’s when I became the most independent. Now me and my brother are so close. He’s like my best friend.”
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Cat discussed in a confessional how her childhood ultimately affected her work ethic.
“Just growing up with a lot of trauma, it makes you very insecure about yourself. The foster family I was with did a lot of things that made me feel like I was just not perfect,” she recalled. “You had to be perfect. So how people view my work ethic is very important to me. I don’t want to be viewed as weak. It literally makes me have major anxiety.”
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
Below Deck season 11 airs on Bravo Mondays at 9 p.m. ET. New episodes will stream the next day on Peacock.
