Chef Adam Glick and chief stew Jenna MacGillivray talk life and love aboard sailing yacht Parsifal III with ET.
It wouldn't be a Below Deck show without a little boat-mance, right?
The latest installment in the franchise, Below Deck Sailing Yacht, came in with a pre-existing couple (hello, Ciara and Paget!), but also may have sparked a little something between chef Adam Glick and chief stew Jenna MacGillivray. Upon meeting Adam, Jenna immediately proclaimed he was "cute" in a confessional. Promos from the season show Jenna also calling him "hot," with the pair appearing to get a little flirty over the course of their charter season. So naturally, when Jenna and Adam dropped by ET, the status of their relationship came up.
"Adam and I have a great respect for one another and we, I think that we both respect our positions," Jenna tells ET when asked to define their relationship. "I would say we have a complicated relationship. We… yeah, how would you describe it?"
"Complicated is a great word to describe the relationship," Adam jumps in to answer. "I mean, you go out and you do this incredible thing for six, seven weeks with someone and, no matter what, you've created a love and a bond under all circumstances, you know? So, you just kinda, gotta -- well, first you're gonna have to watch and see where it ends up, but she and I definitely, everything's amicable."
The duo promises viewers will find out just how far Adam and Jenna took things onboard sailing yacht Parsifal III this season. For what it's worth, Jenna says she wishes she would have bunked up with Adam instead of her second and third stews in the crew quarters.
"We'll ease into it," Adam jokes. "By like, an episode."
"I mean, if my dating history is any indication, clearly I move quickly," Jenna adds, referencing the montage of photos that played out as she recapped her dating history in the premiere episode, Jenna posing with a series of ex-boyfriends, all of whose faces were blurred out.
"One day, there's a chance [Adam] might be in a picture with me with his blanked-out face," she jests.
If it's any indicator of how Adam feels toward Jenna, though, he admits he would choose to work with her over the Below Deck franchise's other chief stews, Kate Chastain from the OG show and Hannah Ferrier from Mediterranean edition. Adam, of course, appeared on Below Deck Med with Hannah.
"It feels… so good," Jenna says upon hearing that, though she adds that she would prefer to be judged on her own merit and not compared to the other franchise stars. She was a casual viewer of the show before, so she's familiar with both women's work. Plus she says, since filming Below Deck Sailing Yacht, she's become friendly with Kate.
"She knows that, she knows she's great at her job," Adam declares.
"I mean I work my butt off," Jenna notes. "Sometimes it comes across as harsh, but I get the job done and I make the guests happy -- and I have yet to ever have feedback from guests in my career tell me something that's wrong with my service."
"My work and my job is exemplified by her, or whoever is doing her job," Adam says. "And she exemplified my food the best."
Chef/chief stew relationships have always been tricky on Below Deck, with communication issues always popping up and leading to fights. But, from the sounds of it, Adam and Jenna's professional relationship was smooth sailing.
"We've had trouble with some of our stews in the past, and Jenna is incredible with [communication]," he says. "She was so good at telling me, you know this is happening, 'I just want to let you know…' 'Adam, don't get mad at me, but you know…' And I don't think she had to tip-toe that much. She would just come in and tell me what's happening, I would adjust and away we would go."
Rolling with the punches is apparently a theme aboard a sailing yacht. Well, rolling with the waves. While the guest experiences may look pretty similar -- Jenna says the size of a sailing yacht and that of a motor yacht, like viewers have seen on the other iterations of the show, are comparable, as is the price it costs to charter the ships -- the crew experience can be wildly different.
"It brings in a different breed of person to join a sailboat, compared to motor yachts," Jenna offers. "Motor yachts for me, the crew that go on motor yachts are primarily about being seen, getting the money, having the luxuries. And I think more sail yachties are in it for the passion."
"I feel like this series is most like what I've experienced in a decade of yachting, you know?" Adam shares. "It just felt homier. It just felt more like the real deal to me. And I think for that reason, it's going to be above and beyond the others."
“There's a moment on our show where it's different because it's now become an adventure,” he says. “And that's never happened in any of the series before. You know, it's the same interior drama, and the crew the pain in the butt, yada, yada, yada. But, for one, moment the engines shut down, the crew goes out and they hoist that sail up, and it gets quiet and there's just this majesty to what we're doing, in addition to everything Below Deck is doing.”
That sail comes with its own complications, though. It can catch enough wind to basically turn the vessel on its side.
“For me cooking, obviously, what a challenge,” Adam adds. “I mean, having everything pushed into a 30-plus degree angle, I mean, your whole life -- liquids, you know, sharp knives, round objects -- all fair game, go flying, hit the floor. I mean, hit me, it was such a concern for me, I had to invent a knife that folds in half and closes, so I don't have to have that hazard around me anymore.”
And then, there are the human hazards. Jenna and Adam promise wild charter guests, including some from Below Deck that fans might recognize, plus loads of crew drama. Living in such close quarters can make tensions high (hello, it's what the show is based around!); plus, Sailing Yacht is the first of the franchise to start with a partial crew already aboard the ship -- Captain Glenn Shepard, First Mate Paget Berry and deckhand Ciara Duggan had been living aboard Parsifal for months. It was almost as if the rest of the crew was moving into the trio's home, with photos of Paget and Ciara hanging on the crew mess' walls. But, while it may feel strange to fans, Adam and Jenna say it's actually pretty typical.
"Honestly, it felt normal to me," Adam says. "Generally when you walk onto a boat for the first time, it's fairly -- there's usually a family vibe. It's pretty common to have crew pictures on the walls."
It's, apparently, also typical to have pre-existing romances, like Ciara and Paget's, onboard.
"I will say this, it was very fun to watch because I love watching couples navigate through troubled waters," Jenna confesses. "It's interesting and you learn from it. And so yeah, there's definitely moments from the season that they definitely… challenge each other."
Now, something that is out of the ordinary is deckhand Parker McCown confronting Paget in the season trailer over whether Paget finds it funny that Parker is still breastfed by his mother.
"It's exactly what it sounds like," Adam teases.
"Honestly, there's some context to that which will come out," Jenna adds. "I don't know exactly when but it will, and it will be better when it comes out naturally."
"Just as his mom might've said, it might be better for you when you just stop breastfeeding naturally," she continues, with a laugh.
For more with Jenna and Adam -- including why they think yachties secretly love to watch Below Deck -- check out the video above. Below Deck Sailing Yacht airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
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