Who knew Salt Lake City and the antipodes would it make the perfect television crossover?
For the first time in Real Housewives history, the women of Salt Lake City merged with the crew of Under the bridge for a highly anticipated three-episode crossover event. To cross-cast, Bravo cameras filmed both shows at the same time for two separate episodes that will air on both. The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City And Under the bridge.
The Housewives have graced the decks of the yachting franchise in the past, but never has a full cast chartered their own superyacht — nor has their journey been documented for both franchises. It’s a moment that’s been years in the making for Bravo, one Noah Samton says he couldn’t have waited any longer.
“It’s something we’ve discussed at Bravo for many years,” said NBCUniversal’s VP of unscripted production (who was on deck for the shoot). The Hollywood Reporter of the Real Housewives–Under the bridge crossing. “I felt like finally, okay, we can’t wait any longer. We have to make this happen.”
And Bravo managed to pull it off, but not without a myriad of bumps in the road. One of the biggest obstacles they faced was the capacity of people allowed on the boat. As two separate shows were being filmed at the same time, Samton explains that members of each production team had to take turns on deck.
“There are very specific specifications on how many people can be on this boat, so we can’t have a full crew for both series. That was a constant problem from the very beginning when we started discussing the idea of filming. That was the biggest challenge,” he says. “And this is also what prevented us from doing it in previous years with other Housewives or other Under the bridges. »
Ultimately, they obtained “special dispensation” from the flag state that regulates the boat, allowing more people to be on board, but that did not prevent constant screening of crew members. “Every minute of the charter it was like, ‘Who’s going up? Who’s coming down? Can we borrow your cameraman here?'” Samton adds.
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City And Under the bridge crossing.
Bryan Schnitzer/Bravo
Another challenge that emerged due to staff shortages was the limited number of supplies, requiring The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City And Under the bridge production teams to “share resources”, including the film crew.
“At one point I told the Below Bridge “If you have to have the surveillance cameras cover something that’s happening in the kitchen or one of the cabins, just let it happen there.” Don’t worry. Let’s let the big cameras accompany the housewives for now,” he reveals.
For Samton, it was “very important” that all the events covered in the Salt Lake City the cut will be represented later on Down. There were discussions about which episode moments to keep in the series that served both stories, including a beach picnic scene from the series’ second episode. Real Housewives point of view.
“THE Under the bridge The team said: “Nothing is really happening for us on this, we want to remove it from the series.” But the Salt Lake City team said, “No, we really need it.” Married [Cosby] call Meredith [Merks] boring. Can we keep him in the show?” he explains. “So I asked both production companies to make their case. In the end, the Under the bridge The team agreed to put a version of this in their episode so that viewers would feel like they were seeing the same story, but from two different sides.
In a few months, viewers will have access to “lots of juicy and fun little anecdotes” from the perspective of the team working for the Salt Lake City Checkers – including “if the Housewives are good tips or not. In fact, Samton “found the Down even more exciting episodes” because of the added shock value of the boaters “having to deal with the utter chaos of the housewives.” [It] was simply endlessly fascinating.
A behind-the-scenes moment that stood out to Samton came amid Lisa Barlow and Heather Gay’s blowout argument at the end of Salt Lake CityThe seventh episode of. After their fight, the former housewife fled and took refuge on a swimming platform at the rear of the superyacht.
This moment, however, happened at the exact same time the crew working on the series was supposed to turn in for the night. And how do the film crew, producers and showrunners leave the yacht? Via that bathing platform Barlow collapsed on, of course.
“We are preparing to descend [for the night,] and Lisa and Heather argue. Lisa is very upset. She is completely distraught and she walks towards the floating dock, which is our exit to get off the boat. And we can’t leave,” Samton recalled. “There’s this shuttle boat, and it’s circling the yacht like a plane without a runway, trying to find a place to land so we can get off the boat.”
Lisa Barlow on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
Courtesy of Bravo
“We ended up having to sit there for 45 minutes to an hour after the shift ended, waiting for Lisa to calm down,” he adds. “She had a call with her husband, John, and we all felt bad because she was so upset. But we were also like, Okay, we’re exhausted. Can we please go home now?»
Despite what emerged from the list of Real Housewives episodes, the yacht’s crew were “not encouraged at all” to interact with women. This would have been a difficult suggestion to follow, especially given the film’s star-studded cast list. Down crew.
With the return of Jason Chambers as captain, former Sailing yacht below deck star Daisy Kelliher joined the crew as chief stew, while Down João Franco and OG, season two alumni Under the bridge chef Ben Robinson completed the returning yachting cast.
THE Sailboat The spinoff, that is, became the subject of controversy after a former makeup artist accused Gary King, one of the show’s stars, of sexual misconduct, leading to a larger lawsuit filed against King, Bravo, and NBCUniversal.
“At present, Sailing yacht below deck doesn’t happen, and Daisy is someone we’ve always loved working with,” Samton said. When asked if Kelliher was going to star on Down indicates that Sailboat is “on pause,” he says, “Everything is always in conversation, and nothing is ever an official pause. It’s very much a ‘we’ll see’.”
Robinson’s return to Under the bridge franchise is the one that stands out, and Samton reveals that he wasn’t even supposed to be part of the series.
“We actually had another lead scheduled who was supposed to be on this season. That lead got cold feet or, for whatever reason, dropped out at the last minute, a week or two before filming started,” he says, adding that Chambers suggested hiring Robinson instead, who was going through “a very specific life situation that made him [where] there were reasons why he wanted to get away from his earthly life and get on a ship.
The crossover will mark the first charter of Under the bridge season four, which Samton teases, experienced “even more “difficult” as Chambers set sail with a whole new crew. Viewers will see more when the episode airs in 2026, although Samton says the network had ideas about how they could have aired both shows at the same time. (“Unfortunately, programming times aren’t the easiest thing to move around,” he clarifies.)
With Salt Lake CityIn the third and final crossover episode of , airing Tuesday, the consensus at Bravo is that the merger was a “huge success” — and audiences agree. The channel unveils the seventh episode of RHOSLC (the first of Under the bridge crossover) proved to be a record for the season with 2.4 million viewers across all platforms. This makes the first episode of the crossover the most watched episode of the Salt Lake City-based series. Real Housewives series since the initial reunion episode of season five.
Yet for all its prosperity, that doesn’t mean the network is ready to start planning its next Real Housewives And Under the bridge crossing.
“I’m not thinking about the next crossover yet,” Samton admits. “[We] I might want to wait a season or two before exploring this idea again, and I also want to see how Under the bridge episodes are received. I think it’s a super fun thing, but it’s something special. It’s not something you want to do too often.
New episodes of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City season six premieres Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on Bravo and airs the next day on Peacock. The fourth season of Under the bridge will premiere on Bravo in early 2026.
