Aesha Scott’s life in TV (Image: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureJuly 29, 2023

The iconic Shortland Street line Aesha Scott snuck onto Below Deck

Guest writer

Aesha Scott’s life in TV (Image: Archi Banal)

The star of Below Deck: Down Under talks Shortland Street, Succession and what it’s really like to make a TV show in the middle of the ocean.

Aesha Scott might just be the most successful New Zealander in the world of reality television. She first rose to fame on Below Deck: Mediterranean, the popular reality show about working on a superyacht that’s watched by millions around the world, where her fierce work ethic, unwavering positivity and no-filter sense of humour quickly made her a fan favourite. She then became the first chief stew on Below Deck: Down Under, and most recently, charmed her way to third place on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here: Australia, winning over a tough Aussie audience with her adventurous spirit and sense of fun.

But Aesha doesn’t just love making television, she loves watching it too. During a quick trip back to Aotearoa last month, Aesha posted on social media about the comfort she gets from watching homegrown shows like Shortland Street and Country Calendar. “Because I’m travelling all the time, I’m always in different places, and as the years go on, I crave Kiwiana familiarity more and more,” she later told us over Zoom. “So when I come home and there’s something like Shortland Street or the news or anything that’s just so Kiwi, it just makes my soul happy. It feels like I’m really home, it’s the nostalgia of it.”

Before Aesha sailed off for more drama in the new season of Below Deck: Down Under, she shared some of her greatest television memories with us.

Aesha Scott in Below Deck: Meditteranean.

My earliest TV memory is… Shortland Street, 100%. My whole life was based around Shortland Street. Mum and Granny still watch it every single night. When we were really young, we had to have dinner and have showered and then we went to bed just as Shortland Street started and Mum would watch it alone. And then we got a couple years older and we got to have everything done and then we watched it, and then we went to bed. Then you get a little bit older and you watch it, and then you shower and go to bed. Seriously, everything in our household was based around this half an hour window.

The show I used to rush home from school to watch is…. Home and Away at 5.30pm. Everyone was just so hot. I’d come home, turn it on, and just think “Wow, look at all the pretty people”. There was always some juicy romance going on. I feel like my earliest Home and Away memory was when everyone thought Tash was a mermaid after Robbie found her on the beach. Stunning.

The TV moment that still haunts me is… There’s so many situations where I still use “You’re not in Guatemala now, Dr Ropata”. I mainly say it when I’m overseas and I’m provisioning, like if I’m in Mexico and the guests want a Dr Pepper or something, I’ll say “Well, you’re not in Guatemala now, Dr Ropata”. No one understands me… but I get it.

My earliest TV crush was… Lincoln Lewis from Home and Away, he was my first crush. I would have loved to kiss his lips.

The ad I can’t stop thinking about is… “Big is good.”

My TV guilty pleasure is… Below Deck, it’s not even a guilty pleasure but a very proud pleasure. I’m watching Sailing Yacht at the moment. It’s so good, but sometimes I get anxiety watching it, especially if I’ve just signed up to do another season. It stresses me out so much because I start thinking about having to do that work too. When I’m in New Zealand, another thing I really, really like to watch is The Chase. I love when they do the quickfire questions against the Chaser. My favourite Chaser is The Sinnerman [Paul Sinha].

My favourite TV character of all time is… The Mum on Schitt’s Creek. Davviiiiiiiid. I’m a huge English freak, and her vocabulary astounds me. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.

The most stylish person on TV is… Myself. I’ve got an amazing stylist Bailey, and she’s absolutely incredible. I don’t get to wear my own clothes on the show apart from when we have our nights out, and I normally chuck it all together with haste about a day before I start filming.

My most used streaming platform is… Probably Peacock because it’s got all the Below Deck series. Netflix I don’t really watch, there’s a lot of rubbish on there, a lot of hot air, you know?

Aesha on the 2023 season of I’m a Celeb: Australia

My favourite TV project I’ve ever been involved in is… Below Deck Down Under. It truly has been really cool because not many people get offered the opportunity to start a new Below Deck series and give it their own flavour. So we were able to do that with season one and give it the vibe that we wanted to give it. That was really special.

The one thing I wish people knew about making reality TV is… That we’re not actors. I saw an article on Instagram about me, and everyone in the comments was just talking about how we were all actors and influencers pretending to be yachties. It just annoys me because Below Deck is the realest reality show you will ever see. Production is so anal about the fact that they cannot interfere with us at all. None of it is made up but it doesn’t need to be, because yachting is so difficult that everything is going to blow up anyway.

The TV show that defined my lockdown was… I didn’t really have one. The first lockdown that I had was in a flat in Auckland with five other people. We were just really into playing cards and playing games. Every now and then we would watch a movie, but there wasn’t really anything that we all watched together apart from the news. That was probably my defining TV show, hanging out for those 1pm updates.

A TV project that I wish you were involved in is… I really want to keep doing Below Deck but I also really want to move into hosting. One of my ultimate dreams is to host The Amazing Race, because I just think it would be so cool to get flown into each location and see the world that way.

The biggest thing I’ve learned from being on TV… Is how shows are made and how much effort really goes into it. When you see the production crew for Below Deck, they’re working the same amount of hours as us, but then they have to bugger off back to the office and keep working on it all day after day after day. Now when I’m watching TV, I have a whole new appreciation for how much effort must have gone into creating this thing that we sit on the couch and watch for an hour.

Aesha and Ryan aboard Below Deck: Down Under’s Thalassa

My most watched TV show of all time is… The only show that I’ve watched the entire series from start to finish would be Parks and Recreation. It’s so funny. There’s just so many different memorable characters in it that make it something so special.

My most controversial TV opinion is… I watched an episode of Succession and I thought it was average. It was one of those shows that everyone just went on and on about so I watched it and was just like “I feel motion sick”. There was just so much happening. Too much. It wasn’t witty enough for me, I like something that’s clever.

A show that I will never watch no matter how many people tell me I should is… Game of Thrones. The scenes are too long. If they made the scenes about a quarter of the length I would watch it. It’s also so dark, if they could up the exposure that would be great.

The last thing that I watched on TV is… Easy, I just watched it this morning: Below Deck.

Season two of Below Deck: Down Under screens on Tuesdays at 8.40pm on Bravo and streams on ThreeNow. Read the previous My Life in TVs here.

Keep going!

Chris Alosio in Talk to Me. (Photo: Supplied / Design: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureJuly 29, 2023

Meet the Wellington actor starring in the scariest movie of the year

Alex Casey

Senior writer

Chris Alosio in Talk to Me. (Photo: Supplied / Design: Archi Banal)

Alex Casey talks to Chris Alosio, the breakout star of bone-chilling new A24 horror Talk to Me, about challenging stereotypes while also guiding audiences into hell.

It’s not often I would start an interview by demanding an apology from a movie star, but in this instance I haven’t slept for nearly 32 hours thanks to fretting about the oozing demons lingering under my bed, in my bed, and under my skin, all night. “Oh shit, really?” Chris Alosio, who plays the charismatic teen ringleader Joss in Talk To Me, laughs while swishing away his vape cloud from the Zoom camera. “Well shucks, that’s my pleasure.”

Even for the most hardened of horror fans, A24’s highly-anticipated Gen Z seance flick, self-funded and made by South Australian YouTube duo RackaRacka, is a tough watch. The Spinoff’s Rec Room editor Chris Schulz said it will “taunt your soul”, while other critics have said it “guides you straight by the hand into hell” and “plunges the adrenaline syringe deep.” I can confirm I haven’t been so upset since Toni Collette picked up that razor wire in Hereditary.

The film follows a group of Gen Z friends as they become obsessed with using an old embalmed hand to become temporarily possessed by a spirit. Hold the hand. Say “talk to me”, then “let me in” and you’re away laughing. The ritual quickly becomes an intoxicating trend, helped by viral social media hype. But when recently-bereaved Mia contacts her dead mother, she sticks around for too long and opens a door that most certainly should have been left closed.

It’s ironic, then, that Chris Alosio, whose gregarious hype man Joss is the custodian of the hand, has never been a fan of scary movies. “When I told my mates I was going to do this horror movie, they all laughed,” he says. “In my circles, people don’t really jam with that.”

Growing up in Porirua and going to St Patrick’s College, Alosio discovered drama at high school and went on to study at Wellington’s Toi Whakaari. Halfway through his studies, he was approached to be a part of Australian series Fighting Season, which is when he made the decision to cross the ditch. But he says it wasn’t just the role that inspired the move, but a growing feeling of limitation for Pacific actors in Aotearoa.

Chris Alosio on the set of Talk to Me. (Photo: Supplied)

“I felt like there was a stigma around us only being able to play one thing,” he says, citing a slew of “South Auckland” and “Sione’s Wedding”-inspired roles. “Don’t get me wrong, I love those guys and I really respect what they’ve done for us to be where we are today. But for that to be the be all and end all? That, for me, is really limiting.” The impact of that stereotyping would later feature in SWIDT’s ‘Bunga’ music video, in which Alosio stars (“If they see me then it’s usually on the TV, Police 10/7”)

Since moving to Australia, Alosio’s acted in Fighting Seasons and a number of other big movie and television projects we aren’t allowed to talk about yet, but Talk To Me provided a unique opportunity to bring something new to audiences. “Originally Joss was meant to have a lot more bully vibes,” he explains. “But I saw a good opportunity to use Joss as a point of levity for the film.” With the blessing of creators Danny and Michael Philippou, he says he was given autonomy to reshape the character.

“I had to think about ‘OK, what is this going to do for the film in general?’ And then ‘What is this going to do for the Pacific Islanders who are watching you?’” The result is a necessary crack up character who not only lures in the other characters to take part in the bizarre ritual, but delivers some of the most memorable lines, like “white people shit, man” in the trailer. That line in particular wasn’t originally in the script, but improvised by Alosio during the final take.

Chris Alosio and Sophie Wilde in Talk to Me. Image: Supplied

“A lot of what I say in the movie is just how we are back home,” he says. “That made me really proud to be able to put that on the big screen.” He’s also grateful that the film feels like an authentic portrayal of Gen Z. “There’s all these small little details, like the scene where Joe is falling asleep watching a video on YouTube with headphones in, which is a very different image to a guy falling asleep watching TV.”

There’s another taste of home in the movie – a SWIDT track appears in one of the early party scenes. “On set, the Racka boys were playing their music through a speaker, and I was like ‘let me jump on the speaker, I can get us the energy before we shoot the scene’,” he recalls. “SWIDT is my go-to for that vibe and it just got everyone so hyped up.” The directors asked him to send them a playlist of recommendations, and SWIDT’s ‘Who Run It?’ made the final cut.

For all the good vibes and flourishes from Aotearoa, Alosio is clear about what viewers are getting themselves in for with Talk to Me – he hasn’t been to a screening yet where someone hasn’t walked out. “You’re not going to be chilling in there. At any point.” And while his character Joss might appear to be a feel-good party guy, do not get too comfortable. “My job in the film is to help to draw the audience into this idea that they would want to party with us,” he says.

“But then once we’ve got you on board, we grab you by the neck and we don’t let you go.”

Talk to Me (R16) is now open in cinemas nationwide.