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Although the heat seemed to be turned down in the galley after sous chef Anthony Bird was fired and Alesia Harris joined the crew on Season 3 of Below Deck Down Under, head chef Tzarina Mace-Ralph began fighting flames again in Episode 12 as she battled with both chief stewardess Lara Rigby and Alesia.
“I don’t know if Lara is trying to mess with me right now, but she seems like she’s grooming my sous chef to be against me. And that’s not a friend. She should be supporting me,” Tzarina said in her confessional.
A terse guest lunch at a distillery on charter set up a dynamic of Alesia, Lara and stewardess Brianna Duffield getting closer — and Tzarina feeling on the outs.
“You just don’t give a s—t about me,” Tzarina declared by the end of the episode.
Tension grew between Alesia and Tzarina in the galley
Tzarina admitted she was being “moody” and “grumpy” in the galley, but Alesia grew tired of “walking on eggshells.” Alesia also felt that she wasn’t getting enough direction from her boss.
“But what’s going on with the crew breakfast? What’s going on? You’ve not actually told me what you’ve got planned for the crew,” Alesia said to Tzarina as they argued in the galley. “So, when you say we’re working together, I have no idea what you’re doing.”
Alesia explained her frustrations in her confessional.
“I have no idea what is going on in the woman’s head. After the rum distillery, she’s all over. I can’t bite my tongue anymore. Tzarina, just be a better boss,” she said.
The tension between the chefs got worse after Alesia chatted with Bri and Lara in their room when the charter ended.
“I don’t get told anything that’s going on about the guest food or crew food. I’m like, ‘So what have you done?’ ‘I’m doing it.’ And I’m like, ‘Just tell me what the f—k is going on.’ It makes me feel like really useless…I just want to cry and cry and cry,” Alesia told the stews.
But Tzarina walked into the conversation, making for an awkward silence, before Tzarina asked Alesia if she was sad.
“I’m bothered. Hot and bothered,” Alesia answered, which Tzarina found to be an unsettling answer. The two spoke again at the crew night out.
“At the picnic you were like, ‘Oh, you can do this without your head chef being here.’ And it was like so condescending,” Alesia told Tzarina.
“I didn’t mean to be condescending,” Tzarina responded, and revealed the root of her anger was at Lara. “I was just pissed off at the fact that Lara told me that a head of department had to be there…when my sous chef is perfectly capable. I’m really sorry if sometimes it seems passive aggressive or overly sarcastic. I just cannot hide any of my emotions.”
Lara and Tzarina argued on the crew night out
Tzarina hinted in the episode to lead deckhand Harry Van Vliet that things weren’t great between her and Lara — who also knew each other from previous charter seasons together.
“I kinda thought that Lara and I would be a little bit more like besties and stuff,” Tzarina told him. “I guess with her friendship with Bri I’m feeling a bit pushed out.”
Lara also criticized Tzarina’s leadership style after hearing from Alesia.
“Alesia is losing her spark and it doesn’t seem like Tzarina is nurturing her. She’s got a chip on her shoulder about something and it’s just very, very weird leadership,” Lara said in her confessional.
Tzarina was upset that Lara was talking to her sous chef about her in private.
“Are you f—king kidding me? Of course, if my sous chef wants to talk to me, she can,” she said in her confessional. “Lara just cannot help herself, can she? This is just classic bitchy schoolgirl attitude. And why was I so naïve and stupid to put her on a pedestal just so she could look down at me and laugh? I thought we were friends. This is f—king ridiculous.”
Tzarina’s anger at Lara boiled over at the crew night out.
“I’ll be completely honest right now, sometimes you can say something to me, and it will make me feel stupid,” Lara told her when she pulled her aside for a conversation.
“But I have exactly the same with you,” Tzarina responded. “The last charter was the first time in my whole career that I’ve ever had a stewardess tell me what to plate on. And it absolutely shocked me.”
The conversation went nowhere, causing Tzarina to proclaim, “I’m done!” and walk away from Lara. Only time will tell if they can get their friendship back on track.
Don’t miss reading up on Nate Salmon, Below Deck Down Under’s new bosun, who replaced Wihan Du Toit.
