Below Deck Med’s Chef, Mathew Shea, dramatically left the show during the filming of Season 6. Here’s everything you need to know about the situation.
Mathew Shea’s time on the Bravo reality show was very short-lived. He joined the Below Deck franchise for only one season.
Season 6 of Below Deck Med aired in 2021 and was set in the Adriatic Sea. The crew sailed across the waters of Croatia on the Yacht ‘Lady Michelle.’
During Season 6, Mathew made several short departures from the Yacht – and by the end, he left the show completely. His sporadic absences made the crew dislike him, as they were forced to cook dinner for the guests.
Mathew Shea was forced to leave Below Deck
On day one of the voyage, Mathew was forced to leave the boat when he suffered a knee injury that required medical attention. The injury happened as guests started to arrive, and the rest of the crew was forced to be his kitchen replacement.
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Katie Flood, the Chief Stew at that time, expressed her frustration with Chef Mathew after his injury. She said, “I was annoyed. I was pissed off.”
When Mathew came back, he started having a hard time adjusting to his Chef role. During an episode, he confessed his despair to Captain Sandy Yawn and said, “I don’t know what to do. I can’t do this. My livelihood is standing on my foot. I don’t want it to get worse. I don’t know what the f–k it is, but it doesn’t feel right.”
The tension between Mathew and the rest of the crew started taking a toll on his mental health. He opened up to the US Weekly and said, “In the moment, it was the best thing I could have done for my mental health. I was in pain and having a full-blown panic attack, you know? And there were cameras in my face. It just [was] a lot. It was all a lot.”
Mathew dramatically left the yacht once more, hitting multiple production cameras as he exited. Fortunately for him, it was the middle of the global health crisis, and finding his replacement was difficult. Instead of firing Mathew, Captain Sandy Yawn called him back to finish Season 6.
