She’s been a yachtie for fewer than 60 days, but Solène Favreau was thrown right into the deep end when her work ethic and commitment to the job were questioned not only by her fellow yachties, but by her chief stew Fraser Olender on Season 12 of Below Deck.
“I’ve been frustrated many, many, many times,” he told her on Episode 14. “I know you’re working when you’re working, but when you’re not, other people are still working. And that’s frustrating for the team. It’s frustrating to me.”
The tough conversation was a long time coming, as Solène’s attitude and propensity to take “baby breaks” without asking has been shown all season long. Solène asked Fraser why she wasn’t just fired if the team thinks she’s a “bad worker.”
“You’re here for a reason, because you have made huge, huge progression,” Fraser responded. “And you are a very enjoyable person to work with.”
But Solène was visibly upset by the talk, and asked Fraser angrily if he was finished to conclude the episode with a cliffhanger.
“My biggest mistake in the past was being reactive, was letting people trigger me,” Fraser said in his confessional interview. “An easy way out is firing people. I really want to finish this season with the same team that I set out with.”
But Fraser warned he wasn’t opposed to an end-of-season change: “She has this last chance to get her s—t together. I don’t want to fire her. But we may not have an option.”
The Below Deck crew shares their frustration with Solène Favreau’s work ethic
No one has expressed more frustration with Solène during Season 12 than her fellow stew Rainbeau de Roos. The two were paired together to work the late shift on most charters, and Rainbeau let her feelings be known during a hot mic moment in Episode 8, ing which she muttered Soléne “can’t even do the f–king job,” among other things.
When the two stews got into yet another argument over the job during the Sept. 1 episode, Rainbeau texted Fraser an update as he slept: “Soléne has been terrible tonight AGAIN. I don’t know what to do.”
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Meanwhile, Solène vented to lead deckhand Jess Theron—who had little sympathy.
“I can definitely see Soso’s not really working up to her standard,” Jess confessed. “I know Rainbeau’s been working her ass off this season, and I do think Soso is a bit of an apple at the moment that’s rotting, but she did that to herself.”
Deckhand Damo Yorg also admitted that while he found Solène to be “fantastic” as a person, as a co-worker—not so much.
“Her work ethic is just appalling, really,” he added on the Sept. 1 episode. “It’s just a blatant disrespect towards the people that she’s living and working with. Rainbeau, she’s really feeling the strain. She does bust her ass. I am up nights with her. And it seems like she’s carrying the world on her shoulders and Soléne’s getting away with murder.”
Fraser Olender asks the deck team to not speak to Solène Favreau
Despite the reports of problems, Fraser was determined not to fire his greenest stew.
“I’m not gonna give up on Soléne. Not yet,” he confessed in the Sept. 1 episode. “And we’ve come far, and we’re gonna cross the finish line together hand in hand. That is my goal. It’s just not easy.”
Fraser made an attempt to remedy his worsening Solène situation by asking bosun Hugo Ortega and the deck team to keep their distance from Solène while on the job.
“As you know, Solène’s my problem child,” Fraser confided in Hugo, and asked that the deck crew not “f—king talk to her.”
He explained: “I don’t want Rainbeau to do it on her own. It’s not fair. It’s not the job. The job is to work. And I know what Soléne can be like.”
Hugo relayed the message to Jess, Damo and Kyle Stillie.
“I can understand the frustrations Fraser’s going through, and we’re kinda at [our] wit’s end,” Hugo agreed.
But when Solène noticed the crew was quiet around her, she confronted Damo, who admitted they were all told not to talk to her because “you don’t do any work when we talk to you.”
He added, “I think they’ve told you enough, and now they have to tell everybody else instead.”
Determined to find out who made the rule not to speak to her, Solène took the bold step of confronting Captain Kerry Titheradge and asking him if he created the rule. Kerry was taken aback.
“I don’t think she quite understands how to talk to your superior. Especially the captain of the vessel,” he said in his confessional interview, and made clear his patience was also wearing thin. “The fact is this. She’s the one who needs to start doing her work. She’s the one who needs to go, ‘Look, you’re distracting me. I gotta focus.’”
Jess Theron confronts Solène Favreau about her lack of work ethic
Jess chatted with stew Bárbara Kulaif about the crew’s issues with Solène, and Bárbara agreed: “Soso, she doesn’t take anything seriously.”
Jess, who was involved in a love triangle (and at times, square) with Solène, told Barbara, “this is personal stuff aside, like, [Solène’s] really crap at [her] job.”
She added her frustrations were growing.
“She thinks it’s a joke. There just needs to be a point where you’re like held accountable. This is some BS,” Jess complained.
After Solène confronted Captain Kerry, Bárbara joined the deck crew in trying to explain the “no distractions” policy, but Solène wasn’t having it. The convo pushed Jess into admitting she was seeing “red.”
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“You keep doing things, and you don’t realize that there are repercussions. And that’s not okay. You need to talk responsibility for that,” Jess exploded at Solène.
Solène didn’t understand the problem.
“What did I do [that was] bad?” she asked a producer tearfully as she took a break off the boat. “I work hard. I do my best. I try. I don’t know.”
As Fraser prepared to sit down to talk to Solène about her job performance, he was blunt.
“I cannot put Soléne on a leash and follow her around and make sure she’s doing her work,” he confessed in the Sept. 1 episode. “She really is replaceable. But I want to try and fix this for her and for our team. And make sure we can make it to the end.”
Don’t miss Solène sharing more on how her relationship with Below Deck alum Dylan Pierre de Villiers “changed” her.
